The Pittsburgh Tatler: This past weekend saw the opening of the “Drive-In Arts Festival” in Hazelwood. Imagine a mashup between an open air music festival and a drive-in movie and you’ll have a pretty good idea of the setup in the parking lot of Mill 19 at Hazelwood Green. When you pull into the lot, attendants direct you to park in a carefully staggered arrangement that affords each vehicle a view of both a small stage and an adjacent large screen.
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As we move forward through the year, more creative ways on how to function as artists have emerged. One of them being drive-in theater. It allows for artists to perform and for audiences to enjoy live entertainment – virtually a win-win as long as regulations are met. I find myself constantly in awe as different ways are created and refined to find solutions to our current restrictions. I am however left to wonder what will happen to this once the weather gets a bit colder. Will the artists perform somewhere closed off? Will they venture out at the mercy of the outside weather? This may be my concern as a west coaster, but I am genuinely curious at the development of this makeshift solution to keep live entertainment going. Anyhow they choose to move forward, I hope this helps inspire other organizations to do the same or a modified version of the current set up.
I went through various feelings and opinions throughout the article. When I first saw its title and clicked on the article, I was basically in awe, thinking that this was a fascinating idea. I still do, but only partially. I know having cars as a concert seems to be able to attain some features that people enjoy: sense of every audience being together and watching a “live” performance. But giving it a second thought actually made me question it. Could they? I don’t know if the interaction between audience and performers could be made while the audience are applauding mostly with their honks and viewing the performance via their car window. I might want to join for a couple times, but I am not sure if this idea would be appealing to many others. Regardless, I still think it is a valuable attempt to suggest a different way of presenting the shows during a pandemic.
Chase and I were having a discussion around this the other week because he had actually attended one of the events that was happening here. I definitely think it’s an interesting premise and a good call for the company to be making the best out of the situation. Of course the pessimistic side of me was like that works until the weather doesn’t cooperate but I think the reasonable response to that is if anything is conducive to working safely in our industry now theatres need to be agile enough to take advantage of that situation. The whole idea of the breaking the rules slightly does concern me, the casual relaxation of safety standards due to everyone’s desire to be back to normal, on a larger scale has been detrimental to the US in many ways lately. I say this but also know that I fall into the desire to relax on some of the strict safety protocols themselves, because the name of the game seems to be risk management and everyone is in a different situation. Overall I am glad to see some of the local Pittsburgh art scene coming back in some capacity to the city.
In April, I was in desperate need to get out of the house and not just for a walk around the neighborhood, but I wanted to keep people safe. This led me to find a local drive-in theatre. I had stuffed my car with pillows and blankets and even packed myself dinner and popcorn. It was a great experience and I would love to go again. I’m so excited that people are taking the concept of a drive in and adapting it to include the events we are missing right now, such as comedy, dance, and live music. Everyone keeps mentioning how it’s not the same, well of course not! Every single event’s number one priority is now safety rather than the content. I’m definitely guilty of comparing things to how they used to be, but that isn’t a great mindset to have. We should focus on what we can do now and how to make it better, rather than what we could do back in February.
I really loved this article. It makes me want to drive out to this festival and go watch! I think this method of performance is full proof of keeping everyone safe. I myself went to a drive in movie during this pandemic and it was very nice, I didn't have to get our of the car and interact with anyone. I also think it is a good way to feel like you are enjoying something live, which we have all been lacking for a long time. I hope this trend continues even when the weather gets cold, but I think right now the weather has been very pleasant. I bet the performers are very happy to be ot although it must be weird to look out and only see a parking lot of cars.
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