The foot lights come up and, centre stage, a man hunches over a computer. When did he last eat? Still, you think to yourself, he looks the sort who, in happier times, would smile broadly and shake your hand before asking your name. But these aren’t happy times. It’s April 2020, and as the shadows recede, low, plaintive voices emanate from his laptop.
“They’ve all gone away,” murmurs one.
“They say they won’t come back,” says another.
“Will they ever come back?” asks a third.
The man casts his eyes towards the seats that fill the house before him — the seats that should be full of people, but aren’t, and possibly never will be again. He doesn’t answer. A single tear trickles down his gaunt, unshaven face.
And — scene!
Jeremey Webb, artistic director of Neptune, with its formerly vacant 458-seat venue in downtown in Halifax, laughs now. OK, maybe that first, anguished Zoom call with a handful of Canada’s leading theatre managers, mere days after COVID hit, didn’t go exactly like that. But it was close. “We all stared at each other with very pale, sunken eyes,” he says. “It felt like group therapy.”
Fortunately for Webb and his colleagues elsewhere in Atlantic Canada’s professional theatre scene, those days are gone. Audiences have come back, sometimes even breaking box office records. But what they’re looking for has changed. The pandemic and its effects — from the high cost of everything, to an abiding suspicion that everything can, and will, change on a dime — has turned once laidback arts patrons into discerning customers of fun.
“Nowadays, audiences want to know what they’re getting,” says Webb, adding that ticket sales have jumped thanks to recent comedies like The Play That Goes Wrong and Murder for Two. “Most of all, after what we’ve all been through, they just want to laugh.”
Lesandra Dodson is Fredericton Playhouse’s programs manager, booking artists for the 709-seat theatre. She agrees with Webb. “Everyone’s really wanting to be entertained, especially after a few years of lockdown and isolation,” she says. “I feel like they’re coming out just to have a good time ... That’s part of my tactic for programming. I don’t want to get too hard and heavy, you know?”
The Playhouse recently featured singer-songwriters Colin James and Donovan Woods; Maritime stand-up comedians Lucien and Jimmy the Janitor; a nostalgic jukebox musical, The 50s & 60s Rock n’ Roll Show; and something called Casting Off, which the program describes as a “comedy show and an arthouse circus event rolled into one” from Australia.
“I like to present circus or contemporary dance or ballet,” says Dodson, who notes that ticket sales have bounced back and “maybe even increased 20 to 25 per cent” from pre-COVID times.
Troy Greencorn, executive director of the 400-seat deCoste Centre for Arts and Creativity in Pictou, N.S., also says strategic planning is big part of his days. The October lineup there featured East Coast singer-songwriters Evans and Doherty and Garnet Rogers, classical performers Stick & Bow and Noël Wan, comedian Ron James, and the Rocky Mountain High Experience, a Tribute to John Denver by Rick Schuler.
Greencorn also staged the 25th annual Stan Rogers Folk Festival, an event he founded, in Canso this summer. “For both deCoste and StanFest, we’re looking at big audience increases this year of between five and six per cent. In both cases, we’ve actually passed where we were before COVID.”
It strikes him how strongly theatregoers respond when promoters start talking in their post-pandemic language. “We’ve established a kind of theme, called Arts for Everyone, that encapsulates how we’ve been trying to drop barriers to (audience) participation,” he says. “That’s been going on for a couple of years and we’ve distributed hundreds and hundreds of (free) tickets.”
To keep audiences keen, as deCoste undergoes a $16-million expansion and renovation, “we’ve been doing shows in six venues in different parts of the county ... To celebrate Pictou’s 150th anniversary this summer we set up a 10,000-square-foot tent with 400 seats, and a big stage and a big PA, and built this wonderful site with vendors and firepits. And then we found a way to do almost 50 shows, with local and artists from all over the country, for free. In two months, we had 7,000 people go through ... It’s been absolutely wonderful to see how many new audiences we’re reaching.”
Still, Greencorn says, it’s not about wooing a penny-pinching public with giveaways. While many were sick during the pandemic, many more were sick at heart. “The pandemic reminded us of how important the experience of a live performance is,” he says. “It’s often been categorized as a luxury, but I think we realized, as we went through those couple of years, that it’s much more than that; it’s critically important to mental health and healthy communities.”
For evidence that laughter may be the best medicine, and people are willing to pay for it, look to Halifax’s Bus Stop Theatre, where events manager Colleen MacIsaac is run off their feet doing bookings through the remainder of this year and well into next.
“Recently, we had this all-ages drag show taking place, and burlesque shows, and big music and comedy shows,” they say about the non-profit collective of performers who also provide their “black box” premises to other artists and producers. “One person in the comedy community, say, does a show and the other people in the comedy community (think about us) as a potential venue.”
Bus Stop executive director Sebastien Labelle does see a trend even in his “anything goes” establishment. “Audiences do seem less inclined to take risks,” he says. “For those (production companies) that are just starting out, it might be harder to get off the ground by getting audiences to take a chance on something new.”
All of which makes Jeremy Webb’s point.
“I always love to have a balanced season with comedy and drama,” he says. “I like to go and be shocked and moved. But there’s a leaning this year towards comedy and it seems to be paying off. Murder for Two has already hit its target. Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and Cinderella will hit their targets. People are going to spend anywhere from $25 to $65 on ticket here at Neptune, so laughter is part of the equation for them now.”
So, how does that explain Neptune’s revival of Tom Stoppard’s deeply philosophical comedy-in-name-only Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead in February? “When I first announced that were doing that back last March, there were people commenting from Texas on social media saying ‘I don’t know where Nova Scotia is, but I’m definitely coming to see that play. Why? Because Billy and Dominic are in it.”
That’s Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan, AKA Pippin and Merry from the Lord of the Rings series that netted producers a kajillion dollars before everyone else stopped going to movies.
“So, that’s what we’re doing,” says Webb. “Not just sitting around here twiddling our thumbs saying, ‘Why aren’t people calling the box office?’”