The Heritage Playhouse in Gibsons has sat unused for two months, but the lights will be up again on Saturday, May 9 for a concert by celebrated local singer-guitarist Michael Friedman.
But you can’t buy tickets for this show. In accordance with temporary health regulations, the theatre’s 146 seats will remain empty. There will be a home audience, however, as the concert will be simulcast live on the Eastlink Community TV cable channel and on Facebook, thanks to the efforts of producer Verna Chan.
Chan produces Music in The Landing, the weekend summer program in Lower Gibsons that provides free live music on weekends at various outdoor locations, but which has been cancelled this year thanks to COVID-19.
“I was just trying to think of ways we could keep some music happening in a safe manner,” Chan told Coast Reporter. “I wanted to have a nice venue and have the sound quality that everybody wants to hear, and that both musicians and the audience deserve.”
Chan has also been producing Friday Night Live, a sort of live variety show on Facebook both to help provide musicians a platform and to raise funds for Coast food banks. It features about a half-dozen performers, each playing from home. Thanks to the abundance of talented local players, the music has been consistently good, but the sound and visual quality has varied with the ability of performers to manage the finicky digital technology.
Composer, producer and touring musician Friedman, born and raised in Vancouver and a Gibsons resident for six years, had his own struggles with a recent Facebook performance on Friday Night Live. “It was really something to get used to, getting all the technical stuff set up,” Friedman said in an interview. “And then everybody’s saying, ‘Well, you should have a different camera angle because we don’t want to look up your nostrils,’” he added with a laugh.
Chan noted that technology should not present any major problems for this hour-long production, given the Playhouse’s lighting, professional-level microphones, a trained Eastlink camera operator, and the expertise of Terran Tasci, of Soundwerks, coordinating the online feed. Eastlink cable customers can tune in on channel 10 or in HD on 610. On Facebook, it’s on the Music in The Landing page.
Chan also got approval from Gibsons council on May 5 to produce a series of similar live shows from the Heritage Playhouse. She plans to use the Music in The Landing budget provided annually by the Town to pay for theatre rental and provide a small stipend to the performers.
“Performances will be up to 90 minutes, starting at 7:15 p.m. Saturdays,” Chan said in a proposal to council. “We’ll keep the musical ensembles small (two to four at most) to allow physical distancing … with a minimum of sound/film crew … and sanitation protocols will be enforced… If we use the current budget for this, we should be able to continue this series through July.”
