YORKTOWN, N.Y. – Can actors sing while wearing masks? How do you show intimacy between two socially distanced characters? What is a theater supposed to do without an audience?
Before March, nobody had ever thought to ask these questions. But to survive, Yorktown Stage and other theater companies needed to answer them—or the curtains might drop for good.
“It’s definitely been one of the most fascinating years of my life,” said August Abatecola, artistic director of Yorktown Stage. “Everyone’s business models have had to shift greatly in 2020, but the theater industry is so fragile.”
Broadway, for example, will remain dark until at least May. London’s West End briefly reopened in December before closing again just nine days later. Locally, the Westchester Broadway Theatre closed for good in October after a 45-year run.
Yorktown Stage is a 549-seat theater located on Commerce Street inside the town-owned Albert A. Capellini Community and Cultural Center. Abatecola and the venue’s president and producing director, Barry Liebman, had to think outside the box to keep the business afloat. Heading into the summer, the artistic director said he “pored over” the guidelines coming from the governor’s office.
“I kind of re-thought the process of what theater was,” Abatecola said. “I put dots down on the stage that were 6 feet apart. I coordinated masks with costumes. I sanitized everything.”
Yorktown Stage was able to hold its summer camp, hosting about 60 kids a week. Campers were kept socially distanced and temperature checks/health screenings were conducted daily.
“We ended up getting a decently full summer,” Abatecola said. “The families in the greater Yorktown area wanted this, they wanted the summer camp, they wanted their kids to be able to do something.”
Since October, Yorktown Stage has been able to mount two full-scale musicals with its younger performers. “Spring Awakening” was performed by kids ages 13-18 and “Guys and Dolls” by kids ages 8-18.
Abatecola altered the script to ensure the characters were always socially distanced.
“If there was any kind of physical contact in the show, I needed to make sure the scene could carry on without that physical contact,” he said.
The young actors rehearsed for about a month before putting on one performance, which was professionally filmed. Cameras were placed throughout the theater to obtain different angles. Like opening night, the actors had but one chance to perform it live; there would be no re-shooting or cutting scenes.
Once edited, virtual audience members could buy tickets ($49.95 per device) for a showing. “Guys and Dolls,” for example, has streamed at 7 p.m. every Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday since Nov. 22 (with 2 p.m. showings available on weekends). The show will close on New Year’s Eve.
“It’s certainly not anywhere near the capacity of what a live show would be,” Abatecola said of audiences. “We get every cast member purchasing and we get a few other people in the community. For us, that’s huge. We actually ended up selling a decent chunk for what this is.”
Liebman, though, painted a more strained financial picture for his business, particularly with COVID-19 cases on the rise regionally. The streaming shows have not been profitable and the winter camp has been canceled. Unless something changes, he said, Yorktown Stage faces an uphill battle to stay open.
“I don’t know how we’re going to survive,” Liebman said. “Who knows what’s going to happen?”
Yorktown Stage has a lease agreement with the town to rent space inside the community center, but that is only part of their overhead (insurance, costumes, and payroll are other expenditures). In April, the Town Board provided some relief to community center tenants by temporarily suspending rent payments until they could reopen. Yorktown Stage resumed paying rent in July.
Liebman is hoping to get even more reprieve from the town and Yorktown Stage may begin fundraising efforts, which it has never done, he said.
A meeting between Town Supervisor Matt Slater and Yorktown Stage was scheduled for this week.
“The Yorktown Stage has been a cultural gem in our community for years,” Slater said. “Like so many other entities, the COVID pandemic has had an extreme impact on their operations and programming but they have still found innovative ways to keep theater alive in Yorktown. We all look forward to a time when we can enjoy some local entertainment right here in our community.”
Liebman and Abatecola, Slater added, “have had a profound impact on the youth of our community by introducing them to the joys of theater, proving its tremendous value to our community.”
If and when Yorktown Stage reopens, Abatecola said, the public might still be hesitant to attend a live show. Given enough time, he said, “I truly think the theater industry will come back bigger than ever. Once somebody sees it back up and running again and seeing a live production with a huge orchestra, I think people are going to crave it.”
There are very few silver linings about this year, particularly for the theater industry, but Abatecola has been touched by the outpouring of support for Yorktown Stage, which has become a “community theater.”
“It’s no longer me running a show,” Abatecola said. “The parent organization donated a set, the interns came in and painted things, we had people donate costumes to us. Local artists, local thespians, they came out of the woodwork to say, ‘What can we do?’ ”
Despite the outlook, Abatecola said he will never give up on Yorktown Stage.
“The bottom line is, if it means doing a bake sale on the sidewalk every day of the week to pay our rent, that’s what we’ll do,” he said. “We’re not going anywhere. This theater has become my life.”
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December 27, 2020 at 03:25AM
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