The Baltimore Center Stage theater has reinvented itself in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic using some of the creative ways it brought plays into people’s homes during the suspension of in-person performances.
Director of Artistic Producing Chiara Klein said some of the changes forced by Center Stage’s shutdown during the pandemic are going to become permanent fixtures, including the recording of what are again in-person performances for people to watch online.
“I don’t want to lose this more open accessibility for anybody,” Klein said.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan’s emergency order closing all non-essential businesses in the state on March 23, 2020, followed by a stay at home order days later meant Center Stage had to reimagine how to operate a theater when its main function was no longer allowed.
“Who are we if we’re not performing live?” Klein said of her thoughts at the time.
At the time, Center Stage was preparing to take Where We Belong, on tour to community centers, homeless shelters, and nursing homes across Baltimore. But with COVID-19 cases beginning to skyrocket, traveling with the show no longer seemed feasible to Klein and the rest of the crew. Instead, they decided to film the play for a virtual audience.
“We made a hard left turn and decided that what we were going to do, essentially over a weekend, was to record the show,” Klein said.
Center Stage’s artistic director Stephanie Ybarra coined a new credo for the theater: “Open For Storytelling,” with the goal of bringing stories to the audience virtually.
The theater also began producing audio plays, moved their summer camp curriculum online, and joined with other theaters from across the country to launch Play at Home. This initiative paid playwrights $500 to write micro plays. People then recorded themselves performing the plays at home and posted them on its website.
“I believe that our job was to look for the opportunities, to figure out how we could be useful,” Klein said. “How do we stay relevant to audiences? How do we make sure that people don’t forget about us? And how do we infuse some joy?”
When Maryland and Baltimore lifted their COVID-19 states of emergency on July 1, Center Stage pivoted back to in-person events. They started with a screening of a filmed play, The Garden, at the Parkway Theatre, where it was easier to space people out in the 414-seat movie theater.
Center Stage returned to their Mount Vernon theater for their first in-person play, The Swindlers, on Sept. 2. Despite new COVID-19 protocols such as attendees being required to wear masks and show proof of vaccination or a negative test, being back in the theater was natural to Klein.
“It felt weirdly normal,” Klein said. “It doesn’t really feel to me like we took a long break from this kind of thing.”
There was one notable difference, though. Center Stage now continues to reach audiences at home by placing cameras throughout the theater for people to still be able to watch at home.
It’s changes like this that Klein would like to keep as a permanent fixture at Center Stage by continuing to offer a live theater experience to audiences worldwide.
“People are calling [the pandemic] the intermission,” Klein said. “I think that that was act two. Like now let’s keep going. Like that has to be part of our play, part of our story.”