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After waiting more than a year for guidance from the state of California on when and how they can reopen, live theaters finally received a detailed plan on Friday that goes into effect today.
The guidelines offered instructions on how theaters can immediately begin producing outdoor shows for a live audience. But the devil is in the details of the 18-page document. Only certain outdoor venues qualify for live performance under the guidelines. And under the maximum 20 percent capacity allowed under San Diego County’s current red-tier restriction, most professional theaters can’t afford to produce a show. Meanwhile, new COVID safety requirements released by Actor’s Equity, the labor union for theater actors, and the state’s AB 5 law for gig workers, may make it prohibitively expensive to hire performers.
VISTA
If a pandemic hadn’t arrived earlier this year, Vista’s Moonlight Stage Productions had planned to produce Lance Arthur Smith’s “Miracle on 34th Street: A Musical Radio Play” onstage at the city’s Avo Playhouse this holiday season.
But when that became impossible, Moonlight officials considered filming the stage play instead and livestreaming it as a fundraiser for the Moonlight Cultural Foundation. Then Colleen Kollar Smith, who is Moonlight’s managing director, came up with the idea to return the story to its audio origins. Playwright Smith based his 2016 show on a real-life script from a 1947 Lux Radio Theater broadcast in New York City.