Looking back at 2022: San Diego theaters celebrated survival and diversity, but battled unexpected headwinds

In “A Story of Two Cities,” Charles Dickens’ novel about surviving tumultuous occasions, the opening paragraph contains the traces: “It was one of the best of occasions, it was the worst of occasions … it was the season of sunshine, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”

That dichotomy of situations might additionally describe the highs and lows I’ve witnessed this previous yr in San Diego’s theater neighborhood because it re-emerged from a protracted pandemic shutdown. By no means in my practically 30 years of masking San Diego’s theater scene have I seen so many financial, social and cultural forces coming collectively without delay to remodel the native arts panorama. A few of these adjustments have been for the higher, however many have brought about harm so nice that restoration might take years.

The largest information of the yr was the surprise closure of San Diego Repertory Theatre, which suspended operations June 19 after 46 years in downtown San Diego. The entire firm’s practically 40 workers had been laid off, together with co-founder and longtime creative director Sam Woodhouse who had been set to retire in September.

Among the many 333 performs and musicals the Rep produced through the years had been 50 world premiere performs by Latinx playwrights — greater than nearly another theater firm in the US. The Rep was additionally the creative residence of a number of festivals that showcased a range of voices, together with the Lipinsky Household San Diego Jewish Arts Competition, the African American-themed Kuumba Fest, the Latinx New Play pageant, Black Voices Studying Collection and the Entire Megillah Jewish New Play Competition.

Then, simply days after San Diego Rep introduced its closure, a firestorm emerged on social media. Actors in a Rep manufacturing final January alleged that employees and volunteers on the theater had engaged in racially insensitive and discriminatory practices, which Rep officers both disputed or mentioned was shortly ameliorated when the issues had been dropped at their consideration. Later, an episode of the Rep-produced EDI-focused (fairness, range and inclusion) stay chat collection “We Are Listening” centered on how the Rep’s tradition of inclusivity had fallen behind the occasions.

But even with the Rep’s shutdown, different native theaters introduced adventurous 2022 lineups which have made this yr’s play season essentially the most various in San Diego historical past.

Following the homicide of George Floyd in Might 2020, a coalition of a whole lot of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and folks of coloration) artists revealed a sweeping checklist of calls for for transformational change referred to as We See You White American Theater. Though the pandemic shuttered the trade, a number of native theater leaders say the shutdown gave them the time they wanted to sort out this drawback in a significant approach with new anti-racist insurance policies and plans.

Dea Hurston, middle, in inexperienced, takes a sledgehammer for the “wall-breaking” ceremony July 7 on the new Dea Hurston New Village Arts Heart in Carlsbad. Behind her is Kristianne Kurner, the group’s founder and government creative director.

(Daren Scott)

Theatergoers started seeing the outcomes of those insurance policies onstage this yr. Newly launched play festivals celebrated the work of not solely BIPOC playwrights, but additionally LGBTQ and nonbinary writers. And in July, Carlsbad’s New Village Arts rededicated its performing arts advanced to native playwright and humanities patron Dea Hurston. It’s believed to be the primary arts middle within the Western United States, and solely the second within the nation, to be named after a Black lady.

In the meantime, many native actors and theater artists idled by the pandemic launched new theater firms, a few of them particularly centered on presenting extra various viewpoints from BIPOC, LGBTQ and disabled artists. They embrace the Loud Fridge Theatre Group, Patchwork Theatre, Teatro San Diego, Fenix Theatre Collaborative and Wildsong Productions.

These adjustments have been a boon for theater artists of coloration, notably Black artists who’ve written and spoken on-line about now getting affords of labor 12 months of the yr, slightly than simply throughout Black Historical past Month in February. One San Diego theater director advised me just a few months in the past that demand for Black actors is now so nice that some San Diego theaters are stepping up recruiting efforts out of city and at area people schools and excessive colleges.

Guadalupe Paz as Frida Kahlo, middle left, and Alfredo Daza as Diego Rivera in San Diego Opera’s “El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego” (“The Final Dream of Frida and Diego”).

(Courtesy of Karli Cadel)

In the meantime, San Diego Opera had a serious triumph in 2022 with the world premiere of the long-in-development Spanish-language opera “El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego” (“The Final Dream of Frida and Diego”). Co-written by Latin Grammy-winning composer Gabriela Lena Frank and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright-librettist Nilo Cruz, the two-hour opera advised the story of famed married Mexican artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera reuniting within the afterlife on Dia de los Muertos.

The challenge was one in all many San Diego Opera efforts to increase its outreach to extra various audiences, notably the Hispanic neighborhood, which makes up practically half of the area’s inhabitants.

Whereas there have been many theater and opera achievements to have fun in 2022, the largest and perhaps most worrisome change that has occurred to San Diego theaters this previous yr hasn’t been onstage or behind the scenes. It has been within the viewers, which has dramatically declined for the reason that first native indoor theaters reopened in fall 2021.

One of many main causes San Diego Rep officers cited for the corporate’s closure was a 60 p.c to 70 p.c decline in 2021-22 ticket gross sales, in comparison with 2019. Different San Diego theater leaders I interviewed final summer season cited related declines of 30 p.c to 50 p.c of pre-pandemic ranges. Plummeting ticket gross sales had been particularly painful for theaters this yr as a result of the funds from the federal authorities’s pandemic safety-net packages ran dry in 2021.

Where did the audience go? Previous theatergoers, notably seniors, had been reticent to return to crowded enclosed areas for concern of COVID publicity; folks against masks insurance policies refused to return again in protest; and something apart from upbeat comedy and musicals had been too miserable to look at after two years of pandemic. My perception, borne out by talking to many once-avid theatergoers who’ve reduce their visits this yr, is that individuals merely bought used to being at residence and watching streaming leisure and haven’t felt compelled to return.

Over the previous century, the American theater trade has been declared useless many occasions, however the 2018-19 Broadway season broke all attendance and ticket gross sales data. And this previous month, Broadway ticket gross sales have confirmed a sturdy return to near-2019 ranges as vacation vacationers crammed theater coffers.

It might take time, however I imagine San Diego theater will rebound. It gained’t be the identical theater neighborhood it was three years in the past. However it is going to be battle-hardened for survival and designed for growing the brand new and extra various audiences of the longer term.