Medicine Hat Musical Theatre rolled with the punches to make it through the COVID-19 pandemic -- SUBMITTED PHOTO.
kking@medicinehatnews.com
Medicine Hat Musical Theatre has made a triumphant return to the stage following a year’s closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“There’s no question that the pandemic took its toll on musical theatre and any kind of those community groups,” Paul Parks, board president for Medicine Hat Musical Theatre, told the News. “The only reason we were really able to manage and survive an entire year of being (in the) dark was because we had built up a fund over time and had it for a rainy day.”
Parks explained MHMT is entirely volunteer run, but does need revenue to operate. Expenses for MHMT include building rental fees, stage and costume materials, lighting and audio equipment, as well as rights to the plays they perform.
“The rights to the bigger plays, they’re a lot more expensive and, of course, the cost, the set, all the production costs and all the costs to the theatre to put those ones on are a lot more and there’s a lot more people involved,”he said. “We consciously realized that would be more of a risk to take on (bigger plays) when things were so uncertain.”
Instead, MHMT adapted to changing restrictions by coming back with radio plays, a form of performance with little to no visual aspect.
“We absolutely adapted what style of plays we were going to open up this season so that we could run it with shorter crews, less cost and still be able to make it work,” said Parks. “They have live actors on there so they actually are plays, but the radio-play style was picked because of a number of factors, but the main factors were around ease of production and lower cost of production.”
The first radio-play MHMT performed was War of the Worlds, which ran in October. It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play will be on stage throughout November and December.
“I think everybody’s pretty happy about live theatre getting back up and going,” said Parks. “The community and the crowds that have seen the shows are all very happy to get back to some semblance of normalcy.”
Parks credits MHMT’s implementation of a vaccine policy for being one of the reasons they were able to return to stage.
“What we were able to do this year to get the show going, was implement a mandatory vaccine policy so all of our volunteers, everybody involved in the theatre in any way, had to be vaccinated, so that we could make sure we’re safe while we’re rehearsing and doing all the operations. And then, we also added that for any patrons to come,” he said. “We’re doing our absolute best to make sure everybody’s safe.”
Parks says he hopes this is the beginning of the return of community arts. MHMT already has two plays lined up for 2022; The Dingdong, opening in February, and Spamalot, coming in April.
