Arts organizations like the Kamloops Symphony will have some people in attendance to start the season in the fall, but it won't be until 2022 likely it'll allow a packed house (Image Credit: Kamloops Symphony Society)

By Chad Klassen

LIVE PRODUCTIONS

Arts organizations clamoring to have audiences again, but will welcome people back cautiously in the fall

Jun 2, 2021 | 2:58 PM

KAMLOOPS — It’s been 15 months since any theatre production or symphony have played in front of a live audience, but that is about to change next season.

Both the Kamloops Symphony and Western Canada Theatre are thrilled at the prospect of welcoming back some kind of audience when its official season start in the fall.

Starting Sept. 7, the B.C. government has tentatively said the province will be fully re-opened as long COVID-19 cases continue trending downward.

While the symphony had a successful last season offering people the same number of productions as a normal year and gaining new fans online — it took a huge hit financially. It collected only 10 per cent of its normal ticket revenue during a normal season, translating to a drop from $250,000 a year to $25,000.

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The symphony’s executive director Daniel Mills is excited to welcome people back to the symphony, but the organization will do it cautiously.

“We’re still holding our breath in terms of having full houses with no restrictions whatsoever in the fall [tentatively starting Sept. 7],” said Mills. “So right now, the game is trying to plan accordingly in a way that will make sense to have audiences in certain ways, but obviously not expecting full houses.”

From a health perspective, the Kamloops Symphony is not necessarily ready to have sold-out crowds, and it’s not sure people will be ready to be packed in for a show.

Similarly, Western Canada Theatre is moving forward with cautious optimism for the fall. It’ll have minimum audiences to begin, then likely be ready for a full house closer to the Christmas holidays.

“Our challenge for the fall is now that our planning cycle is usually six months to a year, so for us to do a big re-opening in the fall really isn’t that feasible,” said WCT artistic director James MacDonald. “But it really does allow us, given the general public health situation now, we’re hugely optimistic that there is going to be a big return to the theatre next year, and now we’re really trying to gauge when that will be.”

MacDonald says WCT is planning smaller productions in the fall with a few spectators able to attend. He notes big productions require bigger audiences to earn revenue, and it’s not in the cards come Sept. 7.

“Our productions, we invest a lot of time, a lot of labour, a lot of money into them and they really do rely on audiences of 250 to 300-plus, so we can’t really take that gamble for this fall, but we’re optimistic for the spring that we will be able to do that, we’ll be back to regular programming,” said MacDonald. “For the fall, you’ll see things like concerts, cabarets, maybe smaller plays, one-person plays — just to get people back into the theatre and into the experience of going to the theatre.”

He added, “I can’t tell you the number of people in the city who have just been saying, ‘We’re so excited to come back! We can’t wait to come back!”

Like WCT, the symphony will be conducting smaller, pop-up events outside around the city in the late summer before launching a new season in the fall. However, it will continue productions online moving forward to reach as many people as it can.