Pivoting for the Pandemic

It’s eight months since Miami’s performing arts leaders had to abruptly close their curtains on big-budget shows, which were waiting in the wings to open. But those who work in the live arts are a scrappy bunch – and they are optimists. The pandemic has had them rethinking the very foundations their art forms are built on. 

“Because of the nature of our business, that is, gathering people very intimately to experience all kinds of things – to laugh, cry, yell and scream, sing and dance together – that’s pretty unique to our profession and it is what makes this so incredibly challenging,” said Johann Zietsman, CEO and president of the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts. 

Live performing arts is in a state of delicate balance. The leaders of Miami’s Biscayne corridor companies say they are walking a tightrope, but holding steady until they can get to the other side.

Professional theater and ballet companies are businesses, don’t forget, so when COVID-19 hit, it wasn’t just the disappointment of closing the curtain that had to be contended with – there were financial considerations, budgets that needed to be juggled and the stress of having to fugure out how to keep employees on the payroll.

“The pandemic is hard on the cultural community – really rough. The performing arts are taking a big hit. They are going to be the last ones to come back fully, but we have innovative companies who are still doing incredible work,” said Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs deputy director Marialaura Leslie. 

Leslie said that while a big void was left for companies when the applause abruptly stopped, the reality is that it isn’t applause that pays the rent. Funding was needed to keep arts organizations afloat.

“Our department has been able to help with the support of the Board of County Commissioners and Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Giménez,” she said.

For one, the mayor and the board allowed for the cultural affairs department to keep the budget “status quo” for its fiscal year despite that performing arts groups are, well, not performing because of the pandemic. 

“The commission approved it almost unanimously and that’s really a vote of confidence in the quality of our art organizations,” said Leslie.

Additionally, the department received $10 million in CARES Act funding.

“This is intended to help organizations to survive and get to the finish line, whenever that is,” she added. 

It isn’t just an act of kindness that the county is stepping in to support theater companies and the city’s professional ballet company. The cultural community is a financial contributor to the county, said Leslie, adding that as a whole, arts groups bring an annual $1.43 billion worth of economic impact to the county.

“It is also an employer of 40,000 jobs for culture workers, and that’s just the nonprofits – not even taking into consideration the for-profit businesses that are creative and cultural in nature,” she said.

Many of the groups were able to keep staff through the federal Paycheck Protection Program; the City of Miami Beach granted funding to some of its cultural institutions as well.

No one can put a definite date on when a live audience will feel confident and comfortable enough to return to the theater or when, for instance, the corps de ballet will be able to stand shoulder to shoulder again. Until then, Miami’s theater companies, along with its professional ballet company, are forging ahead. Biscayne Times spoke with representatives from seven companies to talk about the state of the arts – from reimagining budgets that no longer include a main revenue stream from ticket sales and staying connected with donors to rally support to why they haven’t just shuttered their doors while waiting for the pandemic to pass by.

“We’re not here to raise money to put money back in the bank. We’re all here for the dance. We’re here as an art form,” Miami City Ballet’s executive director Tania Castroverde Moskalenko said.

For now, they are reimagining life away from an indoor space and a proscenium stage. They have no doubt the current will rise again, they just don’t know when.

Miami City Ballet

“One of the things we did is we pivoted,” Castroverde Moskalenko said. “I know you’ve heard that word a thousand times, but it’s appropriate for a ballet company.”

One week after its March 13 closure, MCB had all of its 60 preprofessional students taking classes online; two weeks later, all 108 classes in its ballet school were online. Regarding the professional company, a bold decision was made early on that there would be no performances in theaters until at least October 2021.

“Making that decision allowed us to shift our focus to moving forward,” said Castroverde Moskalenko. 

When it was decided that performances would be shelved – “Don Quixote” was to be the finale of MCB’s 34th season opening at the end of March – the budget was cut in half. The company continued to keep its dancers and artistic staff on contract. The Dancer Support Fund was created with a $4 million goal to continue to employ and provide health insurance and benefits to dancers, rehearsal musicians, wardrobe staff and others.

The company also invested in safeguards to hold, in person, its annual five-week summer program for 100 dancers, ages 10-17, in June. An environmental firm headed by an industrial hygienist was hired to assess and adjust the building and provide precise protocols to be followed, and two nurses from Nicklaus Children’s Hospital were hired for the duration of the program. Castroverde Moskalenko was happy to report that not one child got sick, and they all got to dance. 

Miami New Drama

Six previews of Miami New Drama’s world premiere of “A Wonderful World” were under the company’s belt and a public opening was slated for Sat. March 14. 

“We decided to stop selling tickets and we had the last preview Friday,” said Miami New Drama artistic director Michel Hausmann.

It was a $1.5 million show with investment money behind it to see that the original musical about jazz legend Louis Armstrong had a chance to be Broadway bound.

“Those plans are still intact, but delayed,” said Hausmann.

A month after the show closed, he knew it was going to be a long time before he was presenting a show inside the Colony Theatre on Lincoln Road, the company’s home stage. But there was still a responsibility to the community that supported Miami New Drama to be met.

“As artists we needed to be leading the social conversation. There is so much going on that has generational consequences. We couldn’t sit out what was happening,” said Hausmann. 

He commissioned seven of the best playwrights to create seven 10-minute plays that would be performed by actors behind glass on Lincoln Road storefronts before audiences of 10 at a time, seated on social distanced chairs outside to view the performances. After the spectators have finished the first session, they move to the next play and the next until they have seen all seven. The experience lasts close to 2 hours and roughly 80 to 100 people are able to do the cycle of plays. “7 Deadly Sins – Temptation in the Magic City” is set to open in storefronts on the 1100 block of Lincoln Road in late November or early December.

“We’re activating arts in a COVID-safe way. We have a responsibility of never putting our theatergoers in danger,” said Hausmann. 

The production will employ at least 40 full-time people for a run of six to nine weeks. Following the run of the first “7 Deadly Sins,” a second Spanish edition will open, which will feature all-new original scripts, different than the first run of shows.

“By the time next April comes,” Hausmann said proudly, “we will have produced 14 world premieres in two languages.”

Aventura Arts & Cultural Center

“We were in the middle of loading in a show that was to play Friday, March 13, called ‘Celtic Fire,’ a festival of Irish music and step dancing,” recalled Aventura Arts and Cultural Center’s general manager Jeff Kiltie.

It was around noon that day that Broward County announced it was shutting everything down; Miami-Dade County followed.

“We stopped everything and packed up and went home. We thought that it would take a couple of weeks to get resolved, and then it stretched into weeks and now into months,” said Kiltie, who has had to shuffle shows from his season three or four times. “We keep moving the goal post further and further out.”

He has his sights set on February, where he’ll cut his 332-seat theater down to 78 spots and create seating pods, where only two or four blocks of tickets will be sold with empty seats in between. Social distancing, masks and other safety protocols will be in place. In order to make up for the reduction in audience, there will be two shows of “Shades of Bublé: A Three-Man Tribute to Michael Bublé” on Saturday, Feb. 20 at 2 and 8 p.m.

“We’ll move forward if we feel that it can be done safely. If the conditions don’t allow for things to move forward in a safe and economically feasible way, then we’ll move the goal post again,” Kiltie said. 

With only four full-time employees, AACC did not need to furlough staff. The box office manager is charged with contacting ticket buyers to keep them informed of the show changes. Volunteers, who are a large part of the personnel on show days, are kept in the loop through Zoom meetings.

“We want to make sure they stay engaged,” said Keltie.

Miami Theater Center

Miami Theater Center, the Miami Shores theater that returned to its origins four years ago and transitioned back to shows that focus entirely on children and family theater, was getting ready to bring in a company from Australia prior to the shutdown; the Slingsby Theatre Company’s “Emil and the Detectives” was planned for April. Victoria Row-Traster, MTC’s director of education and family programming, said Slingsby wasn’t going to be allowed into the U.S., so that show was canceled in March when the pandemic started to shutter theaters. Other in-the-works productions, including Baby Theater Festival – pop-up interactive performances for baby and mom – and a “Lion King Jr.” show that was being worked on in-house for more than a year, also wouldn’t see a stage.

“We are in a holding pattern in just about everything right now,” said Row-Traster, mostly as far as live performances in the 330-seat house housed in a renovated 1946 movie theater. But MTC pivoted quickly, too. Already preparing for its youth summer camp, one of the company’s largest sources of revenue, it was obvious children were not going to be coming to the theater for the summer, which Row-Traster said was a big financial hit. The company quickly moved everything online to a virtual camp but didn’t see the number of sign-ups they’d normally secure. Field trip programming – MTC is a usual destination for Miami-Dade County Public Schools trips, with more than 10,000 annual student visitors – was also reimagined and moved online for teachers to utilize.

“We were able to funnel that through the teacher portal and they could share that with their students studying from home,” said Row-Traster, who added that one of MTC’s missions has always been to make sure they are filling the “arts in schools” gap since those types of programs are woefully underfunded. Row-Traster doesn’t foresee schools being agreeable to theater field trips for “at least a few years,” nor to MTC bringing visiting artists into schools. Not yet announced, but in the works, MTC and a collective of other Miami performing arts companies are going to move forward with more virtual programming for public schools.

“Private schools will be able to access our programming, too, if they want,” she said. 

The curriculum, accompanying study guides and other educational materials to keep the arts component intact will be made available. In January 2021, MTC begins “Virtual Field Trips for Distance Learning” with all of the guides meeting CPALMS standards, the state of Florida’s official education source. 

“Obviously COVID-19 has put a fly in the ointment of our live programming,” said Row-Traster, “but is it the nail in the coffin for MTC? Absolutely not.”

The Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts

The last theater to close will most likely be the last theater to reopen.

The Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, the largest cultural arts center in Miami, would be in the midst of its season right now. Broadway Across America’s Miami edition would be in full swing, and the Jazz Roots and Classical Music series would be in the throes of programming. Instead, the Arsht found itself the subject of national press attention after the announcement that it would be hosting the second presidential debate. Although the event didn’t come to pass, it remained a revenue source for the center.

“The debate was still good financially for us,” said Zietsman. “Did we make a fortune? Absolutely not, but we did gain something.”

Even though Miami-Dade County has lifted its emergency shutdown order, Zietsman announced in September that the Arsht’s live indoor performances now have a reopening target date of Spring 2021. The first show on the calendar is for March 19, 2021, almost a year to the date after the Arsht went dark; Siudy Flamenco Bailaora is on the books to perform in the Knight Concert Hall. The popular Broadway in Miami is expected to reemerge in mid-May with the touring production of “Anastasia,” part of the Broadway Across America series. Zietsman said a town hall event for Arsht subscribers and the president and producers of Broadway Across America was eye-opening.

“The nuts and bolts of putting together a Broadway tour are … well, the stars will really have to align for them to get back on the road, because it’s not just one theater – they have to get 35 theaters they will be performing in to make sure that all are contiguous,” he said.

According to Zietsman, the Arsht has lost at least $11 million worth of revenue since March. With that kind of loss, he said, there were hard choices to be made.

“You have to start looking at your expenditure side of the ledger to see if you can get to as close to a balanced budget as possible.”

That meant two phases of staff reductions and layoffs, reduced working hours and pay cuts. Medical benefits for staff on furlough have been maintained. 

“We’re currently about half the size we used to be in operating budget and in terms of staff, and very few people, including me, are at 100% salary,” said Zietsman, who, like performance venues and institutions – has shifted programming online. “We literally changed from being presenters on stage to becoming producers online.” 

Pop-up performances throughout the city are planned, as is using the outdoor courtyard space in front of the center on Biscayne Boulevard for live programming. But Zietsman said he is keeping a close eye on developments that could get people back inside the theater.

Florida Grand Opera 

This was supposed to be a big anniversary year for Florida Grand Opera, and while the 80th anniversary is still on, it’s a bit on hold, according to Susan Danis, FGO’s CEO and executive director.

“Technically, 2021 is our 80th year,” she said, so the season of celebration will now be part of 2021-2022 programming. Meanwhile, tough choices had to be made.

“I made some hard decisions, some draconian decisions,” said Danis. “I furloughed staff.”

She’d determined that the big-scale opera productions weren’t going to happen. The fall season was to have kicked off with Verdi’s “La Traviata” on Nov. 14 at the Arsht, then move to the Broward Center. Instead, the Grand Opera, rather than going completely dark, is going small. On Oct. 24, the Studio Artist Concert Series had its first performance at FGO’s rehearsal hall in Doral. “Opera’s Greatest Hits” is on Nov. 14 and a Holiday Pops Concert follows on Saturday, Dec. 5.

“We know the space and we can control it. We know how much square footage we have and what we need to do for safety,” said Danis. 

Another series, Songfest, will have performances in November at the Coral Gables Museum and the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale. There will be no extravagant sets or painstakingly crafted costumes.

“This is a way for us to explore other music,” said Danis, who made the point that when everything is stripped down, opera is about voice anyway. “What really moves you is the power of the human voice. You can get away with not such an elaborate production and you can give an audience an experience, while at the same time making sure the requirements are in place to protect them and our artists, too, of course.”

There’s no timetable for when the opera will return to the Arsht or the Broward Center. 

Zoetic Stage and City Theatre at the Adrienne Arsht Center

The resident theater company of the Arsht postponed all in-person programming for a year.

“We were about to open ‘A Little Night Music,’” Zoetic Stage managing director Stuart Meltzer said of the company’s waylaid plans. “We had already spent $100,000 on the musical and we were one week away from opening.”

The Carnival Studio Theater inside the Arsht Center, where Zoetic Stage and short play festival City Theatre perform, is configured for fewer than 200 seats.

“To reduce the capacity of the seating for safety measures would be so drastic it would be impossible to produce a season,” Meltzer said, mostly from a fiscal point of view. “Now it’s figuring out how we are going to survive day to day but still make it safe and fun for audiences and vital for the community.”

Virtual programming was not an option for Zoetic.

“That’s not where we want to go,” said Meltzer. “We have to have a live component.”

The company is now working on producing outside programming in the courtyard of the Arsht that could begin sometime in February. Working with Miami actress and playwright Elena Maria Garcia, Meltzer and Zoetic will produce “Zoetic Schmoetic” in an outdoor comedy club-type setting – “tables of four, socially distanced,” he said. “The start of this improvisational theater is something that we hope will move forward when we are back in the theater space.”

Zoetic is also exploring producing cabaret-type programming in the courtyard space, as “ways we can use that space to get people back into downtown and back into enjoying live performance.”

The company is putting some of its financial resources into developing and producing original works as well. It will be offering playwrights from Miami-Dade, the state of Florida and across the U.S. development opportunities through a submission process. Those selected will receive the opportunity to partner with professionals for workshopping their plays, which eventually could lead to full-scale staged productions. Meltzer said he speaks for the entire theater community when he says that the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs is one of the greatest gifts to Miami arts organizations.

“They are taking care of us in a way that is keeping us all alive.”