AMERICAN THEATRE: The last weekend in September, Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill opened in the black box space inside Florida Repertory Theatre’s 100-year-old home in Fort Myers, despite warnings of a hurricane headed further up the west coast toward Tampa.
Ninety-six hours, a sudden right turn in Ian’s path, 115 mph winds and 6 to 28 feet of storm surge later, the show did not go on.
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I am all for “the show must go on”, but in this case, I have no empathy because the theater decided to ignore warnings that were given to them. All of the $60-80k in salary that was lost could have been much, much less if they had properly accepted the warning, got the expensive stuff in a safe place, and got to proper safety. Instead, this theater decided that they were going to open their black box theater even though there was an evacuation warning for their area because of Ian. Not just that, but before the show, ignorant jokes about the show flooding was made pre-curtain to the audience. Which, fine, they don’t want to accept the warning and neither does the audience? Great, go watch your show and have to evacuate halfway through. But then they decided that they needed to make back up all the money that they lost so they threw all of their ruined garbage onto the sidewalk and continued their performance with temporary infrastructure. Their solution was to pile everything on the street and leave it there which I think is even more ignorant considering their prior actions.
It’s always frustrating and stressful when circumstances happen that are out of your control, and potentially put your production or theatre at risk. Coming from Orlando, Florida, the attitude around hurricanes recently has been pretty blasé, considering there hasn’t been a really bad one in my area for a while. Since people are so used to rain, they tend to do the bare minimum of hurricane prep and kind of trust everything will work out. Clearly, that is not always the case. At my high school, they actually had to cancel a week of rehearsal for their fall show because school was canceled, which almost had devastating consequences for the performance. Since they were determined not to cancel the show, they had to find an alternate rehearsal space to school and were cut down to only one day of tech rehearsal, with the stage manager only have that one chance to learn 375 cues. It’s disheartening that it’s not always possible to prepare, as Longenhagen says in the article: sometimes nature is just going to run its course.
It’s unfortunate for the entire state of Florida to have gone through this hurricane and it’s so sad for the theatres who were affected by this hurricane. The storm causes so much damage that money can and can’t pay for. The theatre that had everything ripped away except its steel frame is going to cost so much money to rebuild. It’s silly to think that just one little building can have such an impact when it’s gone. Theatres are communities. It’s a place for people to come together and, as simple as it is, play pretend. But theatre is important to so many people. I’m sure for the people apart of the theatres that were affected, they really miss their second home. There are memories in those buildings just washed and torn away now. But, if there’s one thing I know about the theatre community, is that they persevere. I’m sure with help, these theatres will be back up and running within years to come.
It makes me really upset as someone from Florida that floridians have this stigma towards evacuating during hurricanes. I have only ever evacuated once when living in Florida and I live on the beach. There is this culture in Florida that everything is fine, it is just Florida. I think this stigma came into play with this theater. There is also a stigma in theater that the show must go on and that we need to get it done. So with the Florida stigma and the theater stigma those do not mesh well and are cause for disaster. Even though this theater brought it onto themselves there is a little part of me that does feel bad for all the damage that was done. My hometown was supposed to hit the hardest but in the last moment it went to Fort Myers. So imagining this kind of damage could have been done to my home town and the theater by my home is scary.
Although I wasn’t home during Hurricane Ian, my family was still back in Orlando. It was really difficult having to talk to them from across the country and try to not think about the horrible things that were happening back in Florida. Luckily, my family and our house wasn’t affected by the hurricane other than a little bit of rough wind, some fallen trees, and minor flooding. I have some friends that go to school on the Gulf Coast, and unfortunately they were not so lucky. Lots of places on the coast were horribly affected, and faced intense flooding, closures, and severe damage to their homes. It's devastating hearing what has happened to these cities in Florida, and how theatre is affected there. Seeing photographs alone is chilling, and my heart goes out to any and all affected by this tragedy.
“The show did not go on”. I DIED. I am forever impressed by folks love for theatre and the race to provide theatre again as soon as possible, even after catastrophic events. However one must also think of the possible future damage dispute repairs. Our own human foolishness has made these natural disasters worse and only a lot of effort and time will truly make it better. I hate to think about the cycle of damage & repairs in the state of Florida, and hate to think of how that effects businesses like theatre, with lots of expensive equipment that can be broken and even cause further damage to the building.
As someone who has dealt with hurricanes on a regular basis that have damaged places I’ve lived and has caused disruption in my education and my theatre work, it’s interesting to see how some of the spaces are able to get back up despite the damage. I took a gig in Sarasota, FL over the summer, and was living in Venice, FL during that time. When Ian came through, I was following it because of the impact it had on my friends and family in the area. I hope that the theatres’ insurance kicks in soon and that they are able to get the money they need to help rebuild. I also hope that they have flood insurance, I’ve read elsewhere that a lot of homes in FL don’t have flood insurance. So any damage caused by flooding probably won’t be covered by insurance. I hope to hear more updates from these theatres in the future.
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