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Pollen isn’t the only thing in the air right now. Music is back, too.
And with Gov. Ralph Northam loosening restrictions on crowd sizes, more of us will get to enjoy it live beginning next month.
Caps on gatherings at entertainment venues are going up starting May 15, past peak pollen season and just in time for warmer days. Indoor venues may host up to half their capacity or 1,000 people, while outdoor venues can operate at 50% capacity, up from 30%.
Area arts organizations are more than ready to welcome fans back to their halls and stages. Yet similar to last year, event organizers around the region said much of their planning revolves around current COVID regulations. Just expect the bulk of your live entertainment options to take place outdoors until fall rolls around.
Social distancing is still the norm for now, meaning masks are largely required and sanitizing stations aren’t going anywhere.
“My motto was always just fun first,” said Josh Coplon, founder of concert and event promoter LAVA Presents in Norfolk. “Now it’s fun and safety first.”
Coplon said that to put on live shows but keep fans safe, he’s sticking to outdoor venues and pod-style seating for upcoming shows at Norfolk and Virginia Beach breweries. He’s expecting to put on as many as a dozen shows in the coming months.
He first tried to the format last year for a Halloween-themed mini-festival at a Norfolk brewery.
The show sold out and he and his staff had a lot of fun. However, such events are more challenging to coordinate and because of that, he ends up making less money, Coplon said.
“These shows require more staffing for crowd control. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out a model that will work for bands, venues and LAVA this summer because it’s such an unknown when we will be back to normal,” he said.
He’s hopeful that by fall LAVA will be more or less back to standard operations, but admits that could still be “wishful thinking.”
No matter, though. Coplon is happy just to be back at it.
“When those flood gates open up, I want to be mentally prepared,” he said.
Ken MacDonald, president of the event management company IMGoing, oversees concerts and events at Portsmouth’s Atlantic Union Bank Pavilion and Virginia Beach’s Live! On Atlantic event series. He said they’re keeping a watchful eye on the governor’s orders and doing what they can to safely put on shows.
“Our goals this year are simply to work hard, be creative and do the best we can considering the conditions,” he said in an email. If any particular show becomes “not possible to do anymore,” MacDonald said they’ll “plan and then plan again and plan again” until it is.
For now, MacDonald said social distancing, mask-wearing when not eating or drinking and hand-washing remain part of their plans. They’ll have signage in place informing guests of their safety policies and floor markings to direct the flow of foot traffic.
The Pavilion’s performance calendar lists a few events, including a “Music of David Bowie” concert in partnership with the Virginia Arts Festival and a family movie series next month. Things at the Oceanfront are heating up a bit faster.
The 2021 Beach Events calendar was announced last week, with myriad events planned for nearly every week through September (and the full calendar of events can be found online at liveonatlantic.com). Creative Director Mike Hilton said safety is priority No. 1.
“As more people are vaccinated, restrictions on what’s possible have been reduced and we’ll be extremely careful to adhere to all safety precautions,” Hilton said in an email alongside the lineup announcement.
In Norfolk, Festevents has brought back their “Thank Goodness We’re Open” series, which features concerts and live events in Town Point Park through the end of May including live music from Jesse Chong, Anthony Rosano & the Conqueroos, plays from the Virginia Stage Company and comedy shows by Push Comedy.
Some smaller concert venues, like Elevation27 in Virginia Beach and Hampton’s Vanguard Brewpub and Distillery, have found ways to keep the music going safely in recent months. Besides utilizing outdoor patios, Elevation27 sells only seated tickets for the time being and Vanguard limits party sizes to 10. It has about 100 socially distanced seats on their main floor.
The Hampton Coliseum is also moving its operations outdoors for a July 10 parking lot concert featuring Atlanta metal band Sevendust. Tickets for the show go on sale Friday.
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Area arts organizations that don’t typically hold events outdoors are also opting to do so this summer.
The Virginia Arts Festival will hold its annual International Tattoo at Old Dominion University’s S.B. Ballard Stadium. VAF also has teamed with several of them to host shows on their newly established outdoor stage in downtown Norfolk. Dubbed the Bank Street Stage, the outdoor tented venue sits at Bank and East Charlotte streets.
Rob Cross, the Festival’s artistic director, recently told The Pilot they plan to hold at least two to three events per week on the stage.
“We were looking for an opportunity to bring back larger scale performances. Most of us haven’t been able to do anything of substance since last March,” Cross said in a recent interview.
Already, the venue has hosted plays and concerts. This weekend, Tony award nominee and Laura Osnes and pianist Rob Fisher will perform and next weekend, the Virginia Opera will put on a performance of “Trouble in Tahiti.”
Peggy Dye, the Opera’s general director and CEO, said the ongoing pandemic forced her team to be more adventurous than ever, and that starts with their season opener, a 90-minute version of Wagner’s “Das Rheingold” unlike any you’ve ever seen.
Why? Because the show will go on in the unlikeliest of places: Topgolf.
“It’s like a Greek theater. Each bay is like its own open-air opera box,” Dye said, explaining how she came up with the idea after driving past the Virginia Beach driving range one afternoon.
The show will have it all — sound towers, laser lights, dry ice, you name it. Dye said it will be the total theatrical experience. The Opera will do two performances at the Beach location Sept. 12 and two more at Topgolf Richmond the following week.
“Opera has been forced out of its comfort zone, but we’re hoping that shows like this will have some people paying attention to opera when they might not have before,” she said.
For the rest of their season, they’ll head back indoors. Shows include “La Bohème,” “Three Decembers” and “The Marriage of Figaro.” Next May, they’ll team with VAF to put on a bonus offering of “The Sound of Music.”
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At the Virginia Stage Company, Artistic Director Tom Quaintance said they planned their upcoming season as if it had to go on under the conditions they found themselves in at the time.
“We had to figure out what can we do that will be successful and how can we be conservative in our projections about when we’ll be able to have full audiences back at the Wells (Theatre),” Quaintance said.
They’ll, too, start their season outdoors — and online through virtual programming — and head inside once the weather cools. Quaintance said they’re taking advantage of outdoor spaces and weather because it’s safer in terms of COVID transmission as the “country and community is getting up to date on vaccinations.”
So far, they’ve lined up a partnership with Nauticus to put performances of “Dear Jack, Dear Louise” — a story about a WWII military doctor — on the deck of the Battleship Wisconsin, and they’ll take a tour of “Comedy of Errors” to parks around Hampton Roads, including Town Point Park.
“There has certainly been a silver lining here and it’s been the partnerships. People are really looking at how we can work together, what can we do to help each other out. These are the things we have learned and really embraced during this crisis, that we’re all in this together,” he said.
They hope to bring live shows back to the Wells Theatre later this fall for their annual performances of “A Christmas Carol.”
David Semon, general manager of the Sandler Center for the Performing Arts, said they’ve used the slow season to learn how to operate on a smaller scale. The Center has been hosting church services and dance competitions this year.
“That really has been a blessing for us,” he said, noting that the Center is running right around 30% of its normal business for this time of year.
While area groups like the Virginia Symphony Orchestra have returned to the venue, Semon said the biggest problem is the slow return of national commercial concerts.
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“Most of those are really going to stay at bay until we are fully open and have full capacity,” he said, an issue venues like The NorVa and Veterans United Home Loans Amphitheater also likely face. Representatives from both venues did not return interview requests, but a glance at the amphitheater’s summer lineup includes rescheduled concerts with headliners Dave Matthews Band, the Backstreet Boys, Doobie Brothers and Alanis Morrisette, while The NorVa has rescheduled appearances from Skillet, Dance Gavin Dance, Hoodoo Gurus, Tech N9ne and more.
Until then, Semon said they’re operating with fixed indoor seating and sticking to capacity mandates. The uncertainty still makes planning a calendar of events difficult even a year into the pandemic, he said, but he and his staff are finding ways to entertain, selling out shows along the way and enjoying the sounds of musicians playing in their halls once again.
Like Coplon, Semon said he’s looking ahead to when the proverbial flood gates will open and shows will be aplenty, though he’s a little less at ease about selling tickets than the Norfolk promoter is.
“The real challenge will be when all of these rescheduled shows from 2020 start to stack up on top of new shows, will people go out four or five times a month?” he asked.
Despite the year of challenges and constant planning and replanning, Dye said those frustrations melted away when she recently took her staff out to dinner and a concert.
“The theater capacity was small and we were in our own pod, but tears were jumping out of my eyes. This year was heartbreaking, but it doesn’t diminish the importance of what we’re getting back as live performances return.”
Amy Poulter, 757.446.2705, amy.poulter@pilotonline.com