Hale Centre Theatre opens, then closes again because of COVID-19 — and more reactions to the pandemic in Utah's performing arts world

Hale Centre Theatre, the Sandy, Utah, community theater known for massive family-friendly musical spectaculars, raised more than a few eyebrows in Utah’s theater community when it reopened in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic — first with a production of “Bright Star” in its 467-seat Jewel Box Stage on June 26, then with “Mary Poppins” in the 911-seat in-the-round Centre Stage on July 1.

Theater management has declared a mission “to bring hope, relief and joy” to its audience during the pandemic, and created a detailed plan to install public health protocols for employees and customers alike — meeting the guidelines issued by state and county health officials.

So the theater opened. And in the first week, a cast member tested positive for COVID-19. And in the next week, a second member of the company tested positive. And Hale Centre Theatre suspended its production of “Mary Poppins” for two weeks.

I wrote about Hale Centre Theatre’s closure, in an article that included the theater’s management defense of its COVID-19 procedures and detractors — including current and recently departed crew members — who say the reality on the ground doesn’t match the written plan.

Read about Hale’s closure here, at sltrib.com.

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There’s been a lot to write about COVID-19 and Utah’s performing arts scene, and I haven’t had a chance to round them up recently. Here’s a broad sample of what I’ve written:

• In mid-June, Dreamscapes — the art installation made of repurposed recycled materials and filling several rooms of what used to be a Gap store in The Gateway in Salt Lake City — reopened, with some of its art creations revised for the COVID-19 age.

• The Sundance Institute has been trying to figure out how to stage the 2021 Sundance Film Festival next January, and the festival’s new director, Tabitha Jackson, wrote an open memo to share her thinking. Much is still being decided, or being left to decide until more is known about the virus, but Jackson knows a few things for sure: The festival will still happen in Utah, but also in at least 20 cities around North America, and a lot will be happening online. For now, it’s also going to be happening with fewer employees, after Sundance Institute’s executive director, Keri Putnam, announced a layoff of about two dozen staffers — about 15% of the payroll.

• For the third time, The Grand Theatre at Salt Lake Community College aimed to debut its production of “To Kill a Mockingbird.” The first time, in spring 2019, was canceled in a copyright dispute between the publishing company of the old theatrical version and the producers of Aaron Sorkin’s recent Broadway adaptation. The second time, in March and using the Sorkin script, fell victim to the closures around the COVID-19 pandemic. After altering the production, including a plan to wear face masks onstage, all seemed to be a go for a July 1 opening that would seem more timely in the face of our national unrest over racial inequality and police brutality. Alas, it was not to be, and the latest cancelation was announced just before Hale Centre Theatre planned to reopen “Mary Poppins.”

• Another casualty of coronavirus-related closures: The inability of authors to promote their new books by having launch parties, readings and autograph events in bookstores. I talked to four authors and two proprietors of Utah bookstores about the loss of such events, and how authors and stores are working to create alternative events online.

• FanX Salt Lake Comic Convention announced that it was canceling, er, postponing this year’s convention to 2021. The convention — which lures more than 100,000 fans of science-fiction, fantasy, horror and other genres — tried to put off such an announcement for weeks, but the inevitability was finally too much to push against.

• Another theater troupe had a COVIID-19 problem. The Hopebox Theatre in Kaysville, a small community theater with a mission of providing entertainment to families of cancer patients, had to cancel its productions through the end of the year — because six members of its company tested positive for COVID-19.

• Some theater companies in Utah are experimenting to create live performance experiences during the pandemic. The common thread is that the audiences will be small, socially distanced and wearing masks.

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I’m also on The Salt Lake Tribune’s team covering the COVID-19 pandemic, and the response of Utah’s government and private sectors to it. Read all of the team’s work here, at sltrib.com.

Meet The Aces, your new favorite all-woman indie-pop band from Utah, as their second album arrives

Cristal Ramirez is over the novelty of being an all-female band.

As lead singer of The Aces, an all-woman indie-pop quartet that originated in Orem, Utah, she said she’s had people walk up to her after shows and say, “I thought you guys were gonna suck, and you started playing and you were so good. It’s amazing that you’re so good.”

Ramirez said she would respond with, “Why did you just expect that we were going to be bad? Because we were women?” It’s as if The Go-Gos and The Bangles never even happened.

I talked to The Aces — Ramirez, her drummer sister Alisa Ramirez, guitarist Katie Henderson and bassist McKenna Petty — about writing and producing their second album, “Under My Influence,” about splitting time between Utah and Los Angeles, and about how to be a rock band when COVID-19 keeps the music venues closed.

Read the interview here, at sltrib.com.

Kent James — who went from a Utah upbringing to become a gay punk-rock icon — dies at 56

Many times I have been assigned to write an obituary, and came away wishing I had met the person I was memorializing.

That was the case with Kent James, who died July 3 in Palm Springs, Calif., at the age of 56.

James was born and raised in Utah, in a family that were devout members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He even went on a mission in Argentina. From there, he pursued a career in music — appearing as the leader of a pop trio on “Star Search” in 1993, then going to Nashville to try to break into country music.

But being in Nashville meant being in the closet, something Kent, a gay man, felt he couldn’t do. So he went back to Los Angeles, took the moniker Nick Name, and launched himself as a punk rocker whose songs dealt openly and honestly about his sexuality.

Read more about James in his obituary, here at sltrib.com.

Park City opens its historic Main Street to Black Lives Matter murals

Park City, the ski town and home to the Sundance Film Festival, recently showed its support for the Black Lives Matter movement at the ground level. The city commissioned four murals, each painted on the pavement on its historic Main Street, each created by artists of color.

(The murals lasted a day before someone vandalized them.)

I talked to one of the artists, about the movement and the thrill of creating street art in a town that has three Banksy works. It’s here, at sltrib.com.

Utah rock band Spirit Machines makes a viral splash with a Tool/Led Zeppelin mash-up

Meet Spirit Machines, a Salt Lake City rock band that might be classified as “melodic metal” — which, I think, covers any band with shredding guitars and a female singer.

The band released its first album, “Feel Again,” in April. But what really got attention was when they posted a video of their cover of Tool’s hit “Sober,” mashed up with Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir.” It got a fair number of hits, but really took off when Tool itself gave an endorsement by linking to it on the megaband’s Instagram feed.

Read about Spirit Machines and their sudden viral fame, here at sltrib.com.

Utah-based indie-folk band The National Parks talks about their new album, 'Wildflower,' and the challenges of making live music in a pandemic

The National Parks — an indie-folk quartet based in Utah — had this great idea: They would promote their new album with a daylong music festival at an outdoor amphitheater just outside Zion National Park.

Then the coronavirus pandemic happened.

I interviewed the four members of The National Parks about the album — “Wildflower,” which comes out Friday, June 19 — as well as the indefinitely postponed Superbloom Music Festival, their social-distancing tour of acoustic shows, and the joys of making music and playing it to large groups of fans.

The story is here, at sltrib.com.

Verona meets corona in 'Through Yonder Window,' a Salt Lake City theater group's parking-garage 'Romeo & Juliet' staged for the COVID-19 era

One thing’s for sure about “Through Yonder Window,” the new play being staged by the experimental Salt Lake City troupe SONDERimmersive: You’ve never seen a version of “Romeo & Juliet” quite like it.

It’s staged in a parking garage, with the audience sitting in their cars, insulated against catching the coronavirus from the cast or other theatergoers. But the play’s themes of disease and despair — this is where Shakespeare coined the term “a plague o’ both your houses” came from — are made more manifest when the players wear face masks and practice social distancing.

The play runs this weekend and next — and may be held over — at The Gateway shopping center in downtown Salt Lake City. Here’s the preview I wrote about it for The Salt Lake Tribune.

Catch up with the 29 shorts in The Salt Lake Tribune's Quarantine Film Festival

Got busy for a bit, so I forgot to post this on the site: The Salt Lake Tribune’s Quarantine Film Festival, a compilation of 29 short films made during our current locked-down status.

The films mostly came from around Utah, but I did receive submissions from such far-away places as Poland, India, Australia and California. The genres were also varied, with drama, documentary, animation, science fiction, and a lot of comedy. Seems like the main thing our filmmakers wanted to do while in captivity was — to borrow the lesson from “Sullivan’s Travels” — have a laugh and try to forget their troubles.

Read, watch and enjoy.

In a Utah author's graphic novel, 13-year-old heroes take on monsters and dyslexia

Dustin Hansen has gone from designing video games to writing books — and in his first graphic novel, the young-readers title “My Video Game Ate My Homework,” the Ephraim, Utah, author combines the two.

The book — to be released Tuesday, April 28, by DC Comics — centers on four friends who get sucked into an immersive VR game, and must figure out a series of challenges to defeat the game and retrieve a science-fair project.

Read about the book, and how Hansen and DC designed the book to make it easier for people with dyslexia to read, at sltrib.com.

Coronavirus: A promising treatment, and other news about the COVID-19 pandemic

The most interesting story I wrote this week about the coronavirus — and I’m just a bench player in The Salt Lake Tribune’s coverage, which everyone should be reading — centered on an investigational treatment involving plasma transfusions.

The idea is to inject plasma donated by people who have recovered from COVID-19 into patients still suffering, often in critical condition, with the disease. A 24-year-old flight attendant from Magna was the first Utah patient to be given the treatment, and doctors were cautiously optimistic last week about her recovery. I heard from them, and talked to her husband, about the treatment and her prognosis.

Also this week:

• I helped out on the Tribune’s coverage of Gov. Gary Herbert’s daily briefings a couple times this week. On Wednesday, the state launched a new app to help public health officials track people exposed to the coronavirus. On Thursday, he announced the formation of a multicultural subcommittee, tasked with addressing the fact that minorities are disproportionally hit by COVID-19. On Friday, Herbert started discussing the outline of the state’s plan to ease lockdown restrictions to Utah businesses.

• One business that jumped the gun on reopening — or at least tried to — was the Redwood Drive In in West Valley City. It announced it would reopen this weekend, but had to take it back when the Salt Lake County Health Department reminded them that movie theaters, even outdoor ones, were barred from operating under the county’s public health order.

• And the Tribune put out the word that it’s seeking entries for a Quarantine Film Festival, to see what short films Utah filmmakers have been making about the pandemic and our current situation.