There won’t be any Music Theatre Wichita this year after all. Director shares what’s next
Music Theatre Wichita’s 2020 season won’t happen in 2020 at all, producing artistic director Wayne Bryan said Thursday morning.
Instead, in light of ongoing coronavirus concerns, the five shows planned for this summer will be pushed into the summer of 2021.
“We really don’t see any other choice,” he said.
MTW season ticket holders will be notified via e-mail of the decision starting on Thursday and “are being offered various options for moving forward with us,” Bryan said. They include pushing their already purchased tickets into next season, using their tickets to attend concerts and events MTW plans to put on later this year, or donating the price of their tickets to help MTW get through the downtime.
Bryan said he spoke with directors of theater companies across the country and nearly all of them were making the same call. The only exceptions were a few outdoor summer theater groups, who were warning patrons they might still have to cancel.
MTW’s 49th season originally was supposed to start June 10-14 with a production of “Grease” followed by “The Wizard of Oz” June 24-28.
“Something Rotten,” a show in which Bryan planned to take a main role, was on the calendar for July 8-12 followed by Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” July 22-26 and the finale “Kinky Boots” Aug. 5-9.
A perilous activity
Century II, where MTW’s shows are staged, is still closed, Bryan said, but even if it opened tomorrow, it wouldn’t be advisable to pack 1,900 theatergoers shoulder-to-shoulder inside the Concert Hall anytime soon. It also wouldn’t be safe for the performers, technicians or musicians working in close proximity to put the shows on.
“It turns out that live musical theatre is among the most perilous activities one can undertake – with actors singing into each other’s faces, supporting each other in dance numbers, playing romantic scenes together, and doing quick costume changes in cramped backstage spaces,” Bryan said in a message to season ticket holders.
He’s still hopeful that he can get some MTW alumni who now have careers on Broadway to return for special concerts in the fall. Movie nights and lectures are other possibilities. A schedule of new events will be posted on the MTW website by July 1, he said.
He and his staff also are working on a series of digital performances, and they’ve been encouraged by the response to online programming they’ve launched so far, Bryan said.
Financially, MTW is okay and fortunate that it doesn’t have any outstanding debts or own a building it has to maintain, Bryan said, and he hopes that many of the company’s longtime patrons will choose to donate the value of their season tickets toward supporting the theater. Bryan said he’s also “still hopeful that some of our sponsors will stick by us this year.”
He will be able keep his whole staff on board, Bryan said, and he’ll even be welcoming another staff member when MTW’s new Associate Artistic Director Brian J. Marcum starts on June 1. He’ll have an active role in planning new programming this year, Bryan said.
“We’re in so much better shape than some of the theaters I know,” Bryan said.
In early April, when coronavirus shutdowns were new, a more optimistic Bryan floated two possible contingency plans for MTW’s 2020 season, and the one he was hoping for had shows starting in July and continuing through August with remaining shows squeezing into open spots on the Century II calendar throughout the rest of the year.
His backup plan would have had the season start even later in the year. At the time, he acknowledged that there were other scenarios that “we don’t want to think about.”
Though he’s disappointed, he said, many of the actors, technicians and musicians who were set to perform with MTW this season have said they’ll return to put on the shows next summer.
In the end, he said, there were no better options.
“Our staff feels good about where we are on this right now,” he said.
This story was originally published May 7, 2020 at 12:04 PM.
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