Musical Theatre forced to postpone live shows

By MO CRANKER on November 24, 2020.

Medicine Hat Musical Theatre will postpone its winter shows this year due to rising COVID-19 case numbers in the region.--SUBMITTED PHOTO

mcranker@medicinehatnews.com@mocranker

Medicine Hat Musical Theatre has made the decision to postpone its upcoming winter shows.

The organization had multiple weekend showings planned for its radio play adaptation of ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’ but decided to push all shows back to a later, undecided date.

“With numbers rising in the area for COVID-19, we started to feel like more enhanced measures would be coming to Medicine Hat,” said MHMT’s Lyn Weisgerber. “We talked it over a few times and we didn’t want to put people at risk.

“We decided to play it safe and just postpone these shows until things are looking better in the province.”

MHMT was asking patrons to be masked for the shows and had other safety measures in place, but still felt in was necessary to postpone the shows completely.

“We’re going to talk at our next board meeting to see where we’ll go from here,” said Weisgerber. “We’re going to look at maybe the end of January or February to do a show, but we’ll have to see where everything is at.

“We don’t have anything concrete yet, but we’re hoping to try again in the new year.”

Weisgerber added that MHMT looked at options like streaming the performance, but says they just don’t work.

“To stream it you need to buy streaming rights,” she said. “We think we’re at our best with a live audience, so we’re going to brainstorm to figure out where to go next.”

A couple of ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ showings had sold out, with around 70 per cent of tickets sold overall.

Tickets can be converted into a gift card to use at a future show, or people can get a refund from MHMT.