 You are tuned in to the COVID-19 community report here on KDRT 95.7 FM in Davis, California, and welcome to you. I'm Autumn Laberino and today is Tuesday, August 4th, 2020. We're sharing local news and resources, focusing on what's impacting Davis and nearby cities in Yolo County during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since March, we've recorded 30 episodes and today marks interviews 49 and 50, respectively. So my thanks to all who have participated, listened, and provided feedback. It's been my goal to help provide a narrative for how individuals, organizations, communities, and cultural groups are weathering this pandemic. And a reminder that you can listen to this or any KDRT show at any time on kdrt.org. They were doing a deep dive into local theater arts and we'll hear how one venue and one theater company are working to survive and remain vital during the pandemic and also to be ready for whatever it is that comes next. What will theater shows and concerts look like in the future? My guests today are Joseph Fletcher, who's nearing his one-year anniversary as the theater manager for the city of Davis at the Veterans Memorial Theater. And Sarah Marsh Crowder, who is the literary manager and company dramaturg for Bike City Theater Company. A report from CNN today notes that the seven-day average of new daily coronavirus cases is at about 60,000 and slowly declining. But deaths, which typically lag several weeks behind, are steadily increasing. For a week straight, the U.S. has had an average of over 1,000 deaths per day. Almost the country more than 4.7 million have been infected since the start of the pandemic and at least 155,000 have died. Health officials project there will be thousands more deaths in the coming weeks. So how are we doing here in Yolo County? As of yesterday, Yolo County has 1,582 confirmed cases and has experienced 42 deaths. Our failure to meet state benchmarks has put our county on the state's watch list, which can result in increased oversight and additional closures to combat the virus. We're on that list because over the past two weeks, the county has recorded 420 new cases, which means we're failing the standard for disease transmission. If there's good news, it's that the number of hospitalizations has been steady. There are currently only eight patients hospitalized with a confirmed or suspected case and the county's hospital capacity is within state standards. Less than 80% of ICU beds are occupied and at least 75% of ventilators are available. So that's the good news. The county's dashboards show that just under 25,000 people have been tested and that's out of a countywide population of about 220,000, which equates to roughly 11% of people having been tested. Where testing sites in recent months have typically been at one location, this month Yolo County Public Health is offering free COVID-19 testing at quite a number of locations in Yolo County and their hope is that this will provide greater community accessibility to testing. There are many dates and testing sites available across the county and the best thing to do is visit covidtesting.yolocounty.org and that's where you'll find all the dates and details. For general questions about COVID-19, the county offers a COVID-19 response operations center line. You can get there 833-965-6268. And finally, does COVID-19 have you feeling stressed, anxious or lonely? I'm raising my hand here feeling some of that and I bet there are many others out there too. The Cal Hope Warm Line has free resources to manage stress and a call line to talk about your struggles. That number is 833-317-4673 and it's free and confidential. We're going to take a moment for music and we'll be back shortly with our first interview. Alrighty, thanks to Don Shore for providing that little bit of boogie woogie interlude. My first guest today is Joseph Fletcher who's a theater artist and arts administrator. Much of his work focuses on collaboration and co-design with community making original social and civic practice theater. And he'll explain that to us, I hope. Before moving to Davis, he was a founding member and artistic producer for the artist laboratory theater, a non-profit community-based theater in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and in various capacities. He's worked with the Walnut Street Theater, Cirque du Soleil, the national tour of Chicago, the musical, the signature theater, and a whole bunch more. He has a BFA in theater from the University of Central Florida and this fall he'll pursue an MFA in dramatic arts right here at UC Davis. Welcome to you, Joseph. How are you? I'm doing great. How are you? Good to hear your voice. We met at a couple of Arts Alliance meetings earlier this year before the sickness as my husband has taken to say. So today we're actually talking about your role as the theater manager for the city of Davis at the Veterans Memorial Theater and you've been here for about a year and quite a year to try to launch a new role in a new community. So let's start. Please tell us a little bit about what you were hired to do and then we'll talk about what you've actually been doing during the pandemic. Sure. I was hired to sort of whip the theater back into shape a little bit. It needs a little bit of love, physical upgrades for the space, repairs, maintenance, a lot of really boring nitty-gritty things at the theater. But it's actually one of the few lessons of COVID is the actual time in the space to do some of that work. The start of the year was a little bit difficult to do that work because we were booked up. I came in about the time we were ending with Davis-Shakes being in residence here and going into the Nutcracker and then immediately after that Acme was here and then COVID hit not so that far after. It's really been the summer that we've finally been able to get in here and get a lot of that work done. Right. So it is a very well utilized community theater and when you say it needed a little love, tell us what that means. Oh, just, you know, like the dimmer system hadn't been on it for a while. There is a huge backlog of like old equipment from, you know, two or three decades ago that we've been through and in sorting and we've inventoried and taken out everything in the space, reorganized, labeled, just sort of making it an easier place to function in and, you know, creating a better place for winners to come in and be able to use our things. So you mentioned some of the things that happen there and really over the years I've attended everything from that Children's Nutcracker to film screenings, live theater, live music. It's just, it's a really kind of intimate venue and I think it's a real community treasure. So as you wrap up that sort of clearing out, I know when we first talked you said that you're getting ready for sort of what the next pivot is going to be. So tell us about that. Yeah, well, step one is getting it in ship shape. And I think the second two is getting the administrative side kind of back up the par as well, reviewing all of our policy and procedures, looking at how things are run, you know, the number of crew that are supporting each show. I think prior to me being here there was only one or two crew typically on any show. And we're hoping to provide a little bit more technical support for folks. We've had some lighting upgrades, there's more we can do, but also too if you've been walking into the space and never used the lights before, you definitely need somebody here who's familiar with how to program them and to, you know, better plan for the amount of time you're going to need to program them to do all the fancy stuff. So we're just looking to improve customer service as well. And then generally too, like looking at, you know, like systems of accounting, we're looking at how, you know, we just got a new distributor for the theater, like we know what our safety protocols are. So that's step two, and then step three is what I'm most excited about is starting to develop new ideas, like a lot of my background is in social and civic practice theater and looking at ways to activate the space even more than it is right now and getting people in here more often and making it more of like what the original vision of the Veterans Memorial Center was. It was a community hub where people were in and out. And now we have performances every once in a while. So, you know, two days out of the week, there might be something in here, but trying to really make it something that there's living and breathing, maybe organizations being here more often using the space more, just making it much more active. Yeah, I know one of the things you've talked about at Arts Alliance is kind of steering the theater. I believe you said it was kind of back into a role it had once played, which was sort of social and civically-minded partnerships. And there was actually, the city just got an award for something, and I want to make sure we mention that because it's kind of an example of that, and it also ties into my second interview today with Sarah from Bike City Theater. The city was just awarded the Helm Putnam Award for Economic Development through the Arts, that's through the California League of Cities, and the award was specific to a program the city commissioned from Bike City Theater Company next year. So, I mean, to hear the words economic development and arts in the same sentence is pretty powerful, especially at a time when arts funding has been cut, you know, pretty significantly here in Davis for this year. So, is that the kind of stuff you're talking about partnering with other existing organizations? What's your vision for that? Well, this is a city-run venue, so we're never going to be producing our own work, but I think our role needs to expand from just being a rental venue to taking a more active role in the community and supporting the work that's here. So, I love this idea of economic development, of course, right? There's research out there that it's every dollar spent on the arts generates four or five dollars for the community that's around it. So, one of the best ways to stimulate the economy is to invest in your arts scene. But I think we can hold up organizations. You know, we have resources that we can share here, and we're looking to find ways to do it, and those resources are equipment, space, some expertise to share, time, and then, you know, relationships. Rachel Hartso, who's head of arts and culture, has been here for a long time and knows a lot of people and is really great at matchmaking. And a lot of the work that I really want to support is, you know, I think Community Theater gets a bad rap. What you kind of expect, you know, a lot of amateur people on stage doing, like, name the play. But really, I think Community Theater is really the future of theater. It's really should be stories that are being told either by the community or making with the community that are addressing their aspirations, their hopes, their goals, and helping to achieve those. So, I think the arts and performing arts or theater, which is my background, is uniquely positioned to deal with things like COVID, get messaging out. You know, this bike city play is about bike safety and communicating this new policy from their partner. You know what I mean? So, I think there's lots of opportunities, especially us being entrenched to the city. We could help out public works. We could help out the parks department. And we have, I think, are uniquely positioned to matchmaking, to put people together and share resources and support. That's going to grow our arts economy. That's going to benefit other parts of the city and other things that are socially important to us here in Davis. So, I'm just excited for the opportunity to start implementing some of that. Well, and I hope the pandemic eases up and, you know, you get that opportunity to implement. And speaking of the pandemic and looking towards the future, you know, we all know that our venues are really struggling. Now, as you've mentioned, the Vets Theater is under the auspices of the city and so it's not in exactly the same position that something like the Harris Center up in Folsom, which is now completely closed until mid-2021. They're not doing, you know, any of their offerings. So, moving forward, how, what do you think it'll look like? How will people be spaced in the theater? What kind of precautions should be taken so that people can actually enjoy live theater or live music again? Two thoughts about that. The first is the sad reality is we're the last thing that's probably coming back. It's, you know, having several hundred people in a small and closed indoor space is one of the hardest environments to deal with in a pandemic. There are things that we're planning to do to mitigate that. When we get to stage four, we'll start being open to the public again, but under really restricted capacity for the theater. So, actually, we're going to cut off every other seat. We're going to be seated or a party of people you can come in with, you know, your significant other, your kids, and sit together. But three seats apart from the nearest next group, so more than six feet, stints in the theater. And a whole host of other policies and procedures. We just wrote something like a 25-page, 30-page document for all the weirdness of socially distancing in the theater. And that includes stuff for backstage, for our renters. It's going to be small to start off with, smaller events. And I think in general, too, is like, you know, we're somewhere in phase three right now. And we are able to come back and do this work, you know, working distance as a crew, but eventually we'll be able to have other things in here. So, like, looking to pivot to other ideas as theater companies are, I mean, they're to support that. So, streaming performances, stage readings, even just rehearsals, or, you know, if somebody needs distance to office space, like, trying to find solutions like that to offer to community organizations or renters to make use of the space while it's sitting here empty. Because it's been useful to us to get the work done right now, but soon that work will finish. We will pivot again, exactly. Well, it's great to have someone with your experience and your passion for this work here in Davis. I want to thank you for joining me today. And if people want to find out more of the theater or reach you, why not? Oh, well, I got my email here at the city. It's javefletcher at cityofdavis.org. And most of our online content right now is on the Arts and Culture page. So, check out the city's Art and Culture page for any updates or info about the theater. Right, and there's also a Facebook page for City Arts and Culture too. All right, Joseph, great speaking with you. Take care, stay safe, and I'll see you sometime in the future. Appreciate it. Thanks. All right, we'll take another moment for music as we get ready for our second interview. Well, folks, we're still waiting for our second caller. I'm going to go ahead and read this while we are waiting. Just a chance to say thank you for tuning in to KDRT 95.7 FM here in Davis, California, where the grassroots grow. During this COVID-19 pandemic, we're doing what we can to bring the freshest radio possible to you. Some programmers are able to broadcast from our studio, like me, to you, live, right now, while others are recording at home, and still others are airing shows from the archive. Every week we seem to be bringing more and more people back in one way or another. So, we'll continue to broadcast the freshest radio we can while helping to keep our community safe. We hope you enjoy the broadcast. We appreciate your support of KDRT 95.7 FM, Davis, California, and KDRT.org online. And when you go to the website or our social media, you'll see opportunities to donate and support this fine community resource. Yes, we're going to go back to some music here. Well, hi, folks. I had a second interview scheduled, and the caller has not made it onto the air to join us today, and it's a little bit late in the game for that. So, I'm going to read one more announcement, and we're going to go out with some more music today. I did want to mention that Yolo County has a new packet on isolation quarantine with important instructions. The second item is how to isolate at home if you test positive, even if you do or do not have symptoms. We'll share a post today about the items. That's the county saying that on yolocounty.org, and you can also visit their testing page, which I want to give out again, covidtesting.yolocounty.org. And we're just going to listen to some more music and go out on that today. Thanks so much.