B.C. collective pushes for theatres to safely reopen under COVID-19 health orders

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – The live theatre and cinema industry are joining forces in B.C., asking the province to allow for their operations to resume after months of shutdowns as part of sweeping pandemic guidelines.

The Professional Performing Arts Venues and Independent Cinemas is a group made up of about 20 organizations that are calling on the province to allow venues to safely reopen with approved COVID-19 guidelines.

Jessica Schneider, the executive director at the Massey Theatre Society in New Westminster, is part of the group. She says the main purpose behind the collective action is to can their operating guidelines with the provincial health officer.

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“We are businesses. We operate like other businesses, but even more safely because our very work is about hosting the public safely and controlling and managing people’s behaviour in our venues,” she tells NEWS 1130.

“We have safety staff for all of our events already. We do crowd management all the time. We thought, maybe there just isn’t quite enough understanding for how we operate for us to be categorized in such a broad category.”

Under the current provincial health orders, which have been in place since mid-November and don’t have a specified end-date yet, theatres are designated as “events and gatherings,” but the group is asking to be reclassified as professional art venues.

Another member of the group, Peter Cathie White, executive director of the Arts Club Theatre, says the Vancouver venue held 156 performances with health measures in place before the November shutdown.

“All with physically distancing, all with mask monitoring, with the capacity limit 50 people and we have no incidences of breach of safety protocols or transmissions,” he explains, adding he has been advocating for changes to the orders since they were implemented.

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Schneider says planning is a large part of the operations in the performing arts sector, but without any indication of when venues will be allowed to reopen, operators are put in a difficult position.

“How can we plan for next season when we don’t know if we’ll be able to open our venues within this calendar year? There just hasn’t been any discussion yet. We actually are looking at going into our budget phase right now, and we’re seeing, probably, the end of the wage subsidy and still no sign of when our venues can reopen. That’s actually very grave,” she says.

White says the government support has been keeping staff employed, and while he’s grateful for the assistance, the future is uncertain.

“We also have mandates to support artists and to support marginalized sectors of the community,” he says. “These are different from a regular business in terms of non-for-profit status, but they still require revenue to operate these programs, and most performing arts organizations are still reliant on patrons for that revenue.”

Schneider says the group submitted operating guidelines to the province earlier this month and wants health officials to have time to consider it.

“This isn’t about demanding we open right away or anything like that. It’s about how do we move forward and how can we increase understanding so we can move forward,” she adds.