We attempted a couple of projects over the holiday season and we had a mix of half the performances at 50% capacity and half at 100% capacity. The ones at 50% were the ones to sell first. We never went above 50% in the 100% capacities either.
The messaging is really about arts activity. For us in theatre in particular, it's about the communal experience that Zoom can't really recreate. All of us would like to be in the same room right now. The audience is missing out on that communal experience, as I say, an audience that laughs as one and emotes as one. It's been proven that our heartbeats sync together. It's just something that we're missing and you can't really recreate it from your kitchen. That's the message we have to give, that it's time for us to gather, because that's the one thing we've all missed, the ability to be together.
Every one of our audience members says that they can't wait to be back when it's safe to do so. That's the message we have to send out: Follow the protocols; have your vaccination cards, etc., and let's get together. That's what it's really about, and then we will keep our arts workers, actors, singers, dancers and technicians because we do not want to lose them.