VCC Magazine Summer 2020

V irginia C apitol C onnections , S ummer 2020 7 Continuing a Legacy of Innovation Amid COVID-19 By Katy Brown There were two types of hungering…hungering in the body and hungering in the soul. I wanted to bring together the actor who was hungering in the stomach and the people I knew best, the people of the Virginia Highlands, because I had a hunch they were hungry for the spiritual nourishment the theatre could bring them. —Robert Porterfield When Robert Porterfield, a southwest Virginia native, founded Barter Theatre in 1933, he began the legacy of what would become one of America’s most unlikely success stories. The whole idea sounded crazy: start a professional theatre in Abingdon, Va., in the depths of the Great Depression, hire unemployed starving actors from NewYork, ask most of them to hitchhike to a town they had never heard of, pay them in produce bartered for admission, borrow furnishings from local residents’ homes for props, and expect people in central Appalachian communities to embrace Barter Theatre as their own. Porterfield’s crazy idea worked. At the end of the first season, Barter cleared $4.35 in cash, two barrels of jelly and a collective weight gain of over 300 pounds. This theatre quickly established a reputation for providing exceptional live productions in a warm and welcoming atmosphere for people from all walks of life, and never engaged in racially-segregated seating. Getting Barter Theatre through its early years was not an easy task, despite the popularity of “trading ham for Hamlet.” But Porterfield, his collaborators and local residents who loved Barter simply refused to abandon it. Porterfield worked for decades at the forefront of the regional theatre movement and kept Barter operating through the 1930s, cultivating an audience that came roaring back once the theatre re-opened after WorldWar II. Designated as The State Theatre of Virginia in 1946 and awarded the first Tony Award for regional theatre (1948), Barter received the first Virginia Governor’s Award for Excellence in Art in 1979, and is the only Virginia organization to have been recognized twice by Dominion Energy ArtStars Awards. Today, Barter is the oldest year-round AEA repertory theatre in the nation, and is the only professional theatre of its scale and quality located in a remote, rural area. In a typical year, Barter draws 145,000 patrons to a wide variety of professional resident company productions on its two historic stages, in a town of 8,200 people. Barter has also toured shows since its first week of existence, and produced sophisticated shows for young people since 1962. Of course, 2020 has been anything but typical, yet Barter Theatre has responded to it with an unprecedented level of innovation amid rapidly changing strategies. When Barter closed its doors in March due to COVID-19, we furloughed 90 percent of our employees and immediately set about defining the next steps of our work. We knew the potential existed for hungering among our employees, and that our audience still hungered for the art of professional theatre. Barter’s remaining core functions staff began creating plans for possible new seasons, measuring seats in the theatre to determine capacity that allowed for social distancing, studying CDC guidelines, and focusing on our top two priorities: (1) protecting the health and safety of our staff, volunteers and patrons and (2) ensuring the future of Barter Theatre’s service to our immediate region and the Commonwealth. As a member of Governor Northam’s task force to re-openVirginia businesses in phases, I saw clearly that Barter could not safely produce inside its theatres for quite some time.We created several online events and productions, but our audience wantedmore. I drove around the local area over and over, looking for suitable alternative venues—fields, amphitheaters, hillsides, parking lots, you name it—but I couldn’t stop thinking about the Moonlite Drive-In. Operating on the outskirts of Abingdon from 1949 to 2013 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the Moonlite is one of our region’s most nostalgic venues, with thousands of people having fond memories of seeing movies under the stars. Could a 21st century Barter Theatre somehow find a way to combine the magic of its artistry with the Moonlite’s setting? Thus began an adventure that will go down in Barter history: collaborating with the venue’s owner to make the Moonlite available; drawing on the support and advice of KVAT/Food City, JA Street and Associates, and Meade Tractor; relying on the skills and contributions of craftsmen, donors, volunteers and staff members who helped transform the drive-in; gaining the help of community leaders, especially those associated with Washington County; marveling at the ongoing generosity of Barter’s community of givers; and creating Barter’s medical advisory board whose safety guidelines range from quarantines and family units to testing and cleaning protocols. Our Facebook video announcing Barter at the Moonlite garnered over 25,000 views in 72 hours. Barter was no longer just a theatre—it became a rocket ship. On July 14, Barter at the Moonlite welcomed its first drive-in audience to The Wizard of Oz performed live by The Barter Players, our experts in family programming. A large, newly-built stage includes a roof so that shows may continue amid light rain, and patrons receive live audio through their vehicle stereos. Barter has also added a video team that shoots close-ups of the actors and simulcasts them onto the screen above the stage, along with special effects. Our plan is to perform The Wizard of Oz six nights per week through August 8, followed by Beauty and the Beast, Jr. starting August 13. These productions run 70-90 minutes with no intermission, making them suitable for audiences of all ages and minimizing the use of restroom facilities. Decisions about fall productions will be made closer to time. With Barter at the Moonlite underway, we’ve seen how much our deeply loyal patrons enjoy singing along to the Oz songs they love and flashing their vehicle lights in approval. Barter is again uniting theatre artists and audiences to create a shared experience, with memories that last and last. Here in southwest Virginia, in the middle of so much isolation, we all come together, safely distanced around our cars, to celebrate what makes us human under these stars. Katy Brown became the fourth Producing Artistic Director in Barter Theatre history in October, 2019. For Moonlite tickets and more information, visit bartertheatre.com . V