NEWSLINES
PHOTO BY JASON CASSIDY
Curtain call
A casualty of coronavirus shutdown, Blue Room Theatre ends 26-year run in downtown space
Managing Director Amber Miller and members of theater’s staff and board reconfigured plans to present online-only performances for 2020—both prerecorded and live-streamed productions—dubbing it The Dark Season. The theater also organized a Zoom version of its summer camp for children online, but there was not much initial interest. Swim said the reality of the situation swiftly began to sink in. “The likelihood of us being able to come back any time before, at best, Spring of 2021, it just isn’t feasible,” Swim said. “Live theater is literally the last on the list of [Gov. Gavin] Newsom’s plans to reopen.” Erin Wade, president of the 1078 Gallery’s board of directors, said her organization faces the same difficulties. She explained the bulk of the nonprofit gallery’s funding comes from events and sales commissions from art exhibits, both of which are quashed by COVID-19. She said the gallery has held on to it’s Park Avenue home thus far because of “a flexible landlord” and the 1078 Rent Club fundraising drive established before the virus. (“Survival was always a struggle,” Wade said.) Members of the Rent Club commit to paying $50 monthly towards that expense. “If not for that, we’d probably be doing the same thing [as the Blue Room]—putting our stuff in storage and waiting it out.” Intermission
by
Ken Smith kens@ n ewsrev iew. com
Aoccupied by the Blue Room Theatre’s main stage, surrounded by the room’s figurablack plywood casket sat in the space once
tive viscera: detached lighting rigs, speakers and piles of coiled-up cables. The unintentional stage dressings were appropriate for the day’s drama. Though it was ostensibly a rummage sale on that hot Saturday (July 11), many visitors—admitted in groups of 10 every half-hour, each person with a mandatory facial covering that barely masked traces of grief—attended as much to bid farewell to the beloved theater space as to take a piece of it home. Patrons filed through room after room filled with props and bits of the black box theater’s infrastructure, most of it available Virtual Blue Room for a small donaSign up for a membership to Blue Room content at tion. Even the seats patreon.com/BlueRoomChico were up for grabs ($25 apiece, $40 for a pair); takers were handed a hammer and wrench, and instructed to extract the chairs themselves. The Blue Room’s board of directors announced July 2 that, due to lack of revenue and the uncertain future of live theater during 12
CN&R
AUGUST 6, 2020
the COVID-19 crisis, they would vacate the storied downtown theater space by Aug. 1. While many local nonprofit arts groups are struggling to survive in the face of restrictions, the Blue Room is the first to announce a closure. During it’s 26-year tenure, the theater above Collier’s Hardware hosted thousands of concerts, comedy events and the most cutting edge dramatic productions in the area. The Blue Room will continue as a theater company, sharing new and old content via the internet for the time being and hoping to find a new home once the proverbial air is clear. “My heart is heavy, and everyone that’s been a part of it is feeling this loss,” said Steve Swim, the theater’s development director and vice president of its board. “The way this virus has impacted all live performance everywhere, and the impact it’s having on Chico, is devastating. It’s difficult times for everybody. “The thought that we can’t even meet up at Duffy’s and have a beer after we’re done shutting down the theater … it just kills me.”
musical Stuff-N-Things: A Fair Retail Story, before a statewide restriction on public gatherings of 10 or more was announced the following week. No one suspected then that it would be the company’s final curtain call at the theater space. “When the shutdowns got stricter, we realized that with actors on stage and their proximity, singing and shouting at each other, the ventilation of the room … there was no way to safely put on shows,” Swim said. “So we canceled the following weekends.” Anticipating a few months of shutdown,
Not for lack of trying
The Blue Room was notably proactive since the beginning of the outbreak. The company spaced out seating and reduced capacity per California Department of Public Health guidelines for the March 12-14 opening weekend of the locally created
Board Secretary Cara Ernest moves boxes at the Blue Room’s rummage sale. PHOTO BY KEN SMITH
After the board decided to leave the downtown spot, they moved the theater’s sound system and some lighting into storage, and sold or gave away everything else. Though homeless, the Blue Room will continue to create some original content on at least a monthly basis on its Patreon page, and members of the company hope to find a new home once the virus passes. One of the Blue Room’s longtime associates who came forward to offer assistance during the theater’s COVID-19 struggle is Dylan BLUE ROOM C O N T I N U E D
O N PA G E 1 4
