Pandemic thoughtstream 4 - Keep the audience safe
How do we provide a space where the audience feels safe? More important than “feeling” safe, how do we ensure their health?
(Fantastic recent news about some positive results from a potential Covid Vaccine! Until this gets to the public… it may be some time, like 18 months? So how do we put on concerts (or any events) with groups of more than X in the fall? For the purposes of this thoughtstream, I’ll just stick to some considerations for the audience, not those on stage or backstage.)
1) Everything virtual/online.
Safest, but…
In some ways can be very engaging, but in other ways not at all
Is there a revenue stream?
Are we just broadcasting concerts or creating new types of media more suitable for bite-sized chunks and online digestion?
I think going online and sharing more content is absolutely necessary going forward, but hopefully in tandem with live audiences… and by providing specific perks and media designed for internet consumption.
2) Smaller halls
We have to wait to find out what the rules will be for limiting contact, but if the suggestions are for gatherings under fifty people, I don’t see how large symphonic concerts can a) happen as-is (since we usually have more than 50 people on stage alone) or b) excluding the stage, can happen in concert halls built for thousands (unless see below)
So we need smaller groups, more intimate venues. Have you seen the room at Esterhazy where most of Haydn’s symphonies were premiered? That’s intimate, and that is the way many works we cherish were intended to be heard. Maybe we find mid-sized venues that can allow for social distancing in the audience while not making it feel cavernous. So, this may not be financially viable unless:
3) Split up the orchestra. Many orchestras have chamber music series, and small ensemble series. Send out the orchestra to lots and lots of venues! Solo concerts, duets, trios, chamber music. Local churches, schools, community centers, town halls. Talk about building community if the orchestra literally fills the city with music… Full-time orchestras generally have 8 services per week and these are strictly governed. To keep the orchestra alive, this is the time to revisit what those services mean and how to best utilize the amazing skillset and musicianship of so many fine musicians.
4) Radio. Don’t rule this out. Europe still has many broadcasting orchestras who perform in small halls and stream live on the radio. They do many recordings as well. NBC and Toscanini made it work in the USA. Why can’t we do this again? Do this in addition to putting everything online…
5) Hand out PPE. Let’s assume that the supply chain for PPE is more than solvent in a few months. Want your audience to be safer? Give them a fresh mask when they walk in. Have people trained who know how to fit/size them so that everyone is wearing them properly. If studies show that the transmission is so greatly reduced when everyone is properly wearing masks, why can’t we have gatherings where people can responsibly wear masks. (Attention concert coughers- no removing the mask to take a cough drop…)
6) Shorter concerts, multiple performances. Maybe we can revisit the concert experience through programming. Intermission gatherings and bathroom rushes are going to be incubators for closer contact. Have shorter concerts (under 1 hr). Take a 1 hour break, during which a fantastically efficient team of cleaners can do a quick clean and disinfect of public spaces, bathrooms, and lobby. Repeat the performance for a new audience. Maybe the audience is only half full or a third full, but if we do the same program 2-3 times in a row and unions can agree to consider it one service, we still have safe(?) live performances.
7) Isolation booths. Glass baffles around audience members or boxes? Family seating? It seems like opera boxes finally have a 21st century equivalent, where individual groups/families enter through one door and then are in their own enclosed spaces. Suddenly those skyboxes and fancy sports boxes make sense! Or maybe we know more about this disease as it unfolds and we create “at-risk” seating sections that have more social distancing, and then those that are not “at-risk” can sit closer together (still with PPE).