Ross Zentner
Children's Theater of Madison's production of "Peter Pan" had to be shut down after its final dress rehearsal.
Just when the sets were mounted, the world came crashing down.
“I couldn’t think of a more perfect storm to knock out our industry,” says Mark Bitney, a union stagehand at Overture and member of IATSE Local 251, the International Association of Theatrical and Stage Employees. Bitney was part of stage crews that worked on three enormous shows: the Broadway tour of Wicked, Children’s Theater of Madison’s Peter Pan, and country singer Jason Aldean at the Alliant Energy Center.
“It’s a complete shutdown of what we’re doing,” adds Bitney. “I’ve had three different major productions get cut midway through. Wicked was in the middle of the run, and we just finished doing the fly cues and doing the final dress rehearsal of [Children’s Theater of Madison’s] Peter Pan. At least the kids got to perform for the parents.”
The sets are still up in Overture Hall and the Capitol Theater.
Bitney, a 30-year veteran, says the economic impact, especially on younger members of the union, which has approximately 200 members, is devastating. “There’s a lot of younger members living paycheck to paycheck. Spring is one of the busiest seasons and it’s when a lot of the younger stagehands get to take on bigger roles. We were bracing for one of our busiest times.”
And given the current spread of COVID-19 and subsequent cancellations, Bitney wonders whether the stagehands’ biggest events, the upcoming Democratic National Convention and Summerfest, will go on as planned.
Bitney, 52, applied for unemployment compensation on March 16. “I’m not super proud of that but that’s what it’s there for — I’ve been paying for it all my life,” he says.
Justina Vickerman, IATSE’s call steward, has set up a GoFundMe account to help stagehands in their time of need. They do not receive vacation or sick pay. As of March 18, the campaign had raised $3,484 toward a $10,000 goal.
“We’re going to get through this,” says Bitney.
Roseann Sheridan, artistic director of Children’s Theater of Madison, is reeling from the experience of having to cancel the company’s ambitious and costly production of Peter Pan. She says it was “gut-wrenching and profound.”
The normal concerns of how to make a show go smoothly quickly became overshadowed by the looming possibility that the show would be shut down. “My heart broke for all the work that had gone into making this show and getting so close to opening it,” Sheridan writes in an email. “At Thursday night’s cast meeting before our run-thru, a young actor asked, with more than a twinge of worry in her voice, ‘Is there a chance we might not get to do this show?’ Friday morning, we at CTM made the decision to cancel the run of the show, and by Friday afternoon the governor’s mandated limit in crowd size was in place. The word got out, so we counted heads at the stage door and let in the allowable number of people. Some people didn’t get in.”
Sheridan says the crowd for that one performance was “the most amazing audience ever. I can say it was one of the most incredible experiences of my life — I laughed, I cried, I watched that audience and those actors on stage take in this experience like it was the last time they would ever be together and they were going to celebrate every moment. I really can’t describe it. We use the word ‘magical’ a lot in describing the experience of theater. This was a time when I can say that is truly the best word to describe it.”
Yet another theater heartbreak came when Forward Theater Company had to cancel on the eve of opening the Midwest premiere of The Amateurs, a new play with an eerily relevant message for living through a pandemic. “It’s a play about a troupe of amateur performers in Europe in the 14th century performing Bible stories while they try to outrun the plague,” says Jennifer Uphoff Gray, the company’s artistic director. “It’s a comedy, but it’s incredibly profound and insightful about the purpose of making art in times of crisis.”
The Amateurs was cancelled right as the show was beginning tech rehearsals. “The very first thing we decided to do was pay everyone to the completion of their contract,” says Gray. “I understand not everyone can do that, and I ache for them. And we are going to take a hit, a big hit, but our mission says we provide a home for Wisconsin theater artists.”
The cast and crew continued to rehearse with plans to provide a live-streamed performance. Doing this involved a quick pivot and negotiations with unions, lawyers and authors agents. But in the fast-changing world of recommendations on crowd numbers, those plans had to be scrapped on March 16, two days before the recording was due to take place. Gatherings of more than 10 people are banned in Wisconsin, and it takes more than that to mount the show.
Gray says she hopes Madison audiences will have a chance to gather again and see a production of The Amateurs, with its themes of living under quarantine. “The play reflects from a modern perspective, the years of the AIDS crisis. When we chose it, we liked the parallel of looking at the 14th century and the late 20th century,” says Gray. “Over the last three weeks, it felt like every new line took on new significance.”
[Editor's note: Developments relating to COVID-19 are evolving quickly. Please note that any information in this article is subject to change.]
