Category: Q&A

The Palace brings back live theater with summer series

After suspending its programming for four months, the Palace Theatre reopened its doors on July 7 with Beauty and the Beast, the first show of the 2020 Bank of New Hampshire Children’s Summer Series, which will continue with kid-friendly live theater performances every week through mid-August. Palace Theatre President and CEO Peter Ramsey discussed why the theater decided to move forward with live performances this summer and how Covid-19 has changed the theater-going experience.

What is the 2020 Bank of New Hampshire Children’s Summer Series?

We’ve done it at the Palace for 20 years now, and it’s become very successful. [The shows are] generally performed by college graduates and college students who are seeking theater degrees. … We generally have between six and 12 [shows], so for eight or nine weeks in the summer, we do a different children’s theater title every week. … We have a list of about 25 shows that we choose from, and they’re generally shows that are popular with people and that have a nice message. They’re typical kinds of shows that kids would like, because this is really for the kids. … It’s generally mothers, grandmothers and young children between [the ages of] 3 and 12 who come.

Why did you decide to move forward with the series, amid everything that’s going on with Covid-19?

The governor of New Hampshire and the CDC created guidelines about a month ago that allowed public theaters to open, so we worked with the City of Manchester and the State of New Hampshire to reopen under these guidelines. We had been closed for four months and lost $1.5 million in ticket sales. We had 70 employees, and now we’re down to 15, so we felt very strongly that this was an opportunity to keep some of our employees employed, and to invite the public back in.

How did your reopening week go?

People loved it. The response has been fabulous. [There was] not one complaint. Everyone brought a mask with them to the theater; we’ll offer a mask to anyone who doesn’t have one, but everyone brought one. … The phones have been ringing a lot this week, and people seem very excited about [the upcoming shows].

How has live theater at the Palace changed as a result of Covid-19?

Everything’s different. We are only selling tickets by phone. When a customer walks up to the front door, we greet them, we ask them to put a mask on and we ask them questions, like ‘Have you been sick?’ and ‘Do you have a fever?’ … There’s actually a list of seven questions that the State asks that we ask everyone who comes into the theater. … We’re at 40-percent [capacity], so we have about 350 seats blocked off where people can’t sit. There is six feet between every seat, so if a mom and daughter sit together, there would be six feet between them and anybody else. … The shows are very short — they’re 45 minutes — and we keep the doors open so we can keep the air going in the theater. … There are no concessions. … We have very strict rules for the ushers; they have to wear a mask, and they can’t touch anybody. … The actors [on stage] are always 25 feet away from the audience, so there’s a lot of room between them. We’ve always had the [Summer Series] actors come out and meet the kids after the shows, which is very popular — the kids would wait an hour to meet Cinderella — but we canceled that, so there’s no interaction between the audience and the actors this year, which is very important.

How was the cast able to rehearse safely?

They committed that they would behave themselves and be very careful. We tested some of them [for Covid-19], and others had already been quarantined. They all live at home. We know each actor. We’ve known most of them for four or five years through our children’s theater program; these are our young actors who trained with us, then went off to college. Backstage, they stay six feet apart at all times. They are very careful during rehearsals, and they rehearse with masks on. There’s very little interaction.

Did you need to modify the shows in any way to maintain distance between the actors?

Yes. There’s no hugging or kissing — nothing like that. They’re very careful about staying separate. There’s no live music; it’s all tracked, so that helps. There are very few props and not a lot of things [for the actors] to touch. We have this beautiful video wall which is 20 feet high and 30 feet wide, and it looks really cool, so, because of that, we don’t need to use a lot of props.

What does the return of live theater do for the community right now?

It helps bring our community back together again. … It’s not normal to stay at home for months. Stress levels are very high. … Going to the theater allows you to smile. It allows you to do something with your child. These are family shows, and I think [families] can feel that it’s safe.

What are the Palace’s other plans moving forward?

We hope to open the Rex Theatre in two weeks and [accommodate] 100 people in there, safely spaced and wearing face masks. We hope to bring Bob Marley — he’s a big, famous comedian — to the Palace in August, and we hope to open up for our regular theater season in September … with Nunsense.

2020 Bank of New Hampshire Children’s Summer Series
The lineup for the rest of the summer includes The Wizard of Oz on Thursday, July 16; The Little Mermaid Tuesday, July 21 through Thursday, July 23; Aladdin Tuesday, July 28 through Thursday, July 30; Alice in Wonderland Tuesday, Aug. 4 through Thursday, Aug. 6; Peter Pan Tuesday, Aug. 11 through Thursday, Aug. 13; and Cinderella on Tuesday, Aug. 18 and Wednesday, Aug. 19. Showtimes are at 10 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. Tickets cost $10. The Palace Theatre is located at 80 Hanover St., Manchester. Call 668-5588 or visit palacetheatre.org.

Derry teacher earns sabbatical for Promoting Just Schools

The New Hampshire Charitable Foundation has awarded its 2020 Christa McAuliffe Sabbatical to Misty Crompton, a social studies teacher at West Running Brook Middle School in Derry. The sabbatical gives a New Hampshire teacher a year off with pay and a budget to work on a project focused on improving education in the state. Crompton discussed her project, Promoting Just Schools, and the need for educational equity.

What’s your background in education and equity work in schools?

I’m a Grade 7 social studies teacher in Derry. I’ve been a teacher there for 20 years. I’ve been on the executive board of my education association in Derry for over a decade. I belong to an organization called Leaders for Just Schools, and to a New Hampshire Human Civil Rights Committee. I also recently [became] an advisor with the nonprofit group Rise of Peace. I work with these organizations as well as my local school district right now in this equity work.

Why did you apply for the sabbatical?

It was the Just Schools program that really motivated and inspired me to [apply] for the sabbatical. … My heart was really invested in doing this work, but my realities made it difficult to dive in the way I wanted to. There are a lot of time commitments that come with my career, and I’m very busy with a million committees and clubs and volunteer organizations. … I’m also a mom of two active boys, an 11-year-old who has autism and an 8-year-old.

Why did you decide to focus your work on Just Schools and equity in schools?

I was asked to go to San Diego last summer for the Just Schools program. There were 100 educators there for four days, examining issues of equity and racial and social justice, and it was incredibly powerful and emotional. … So much fear and frustration had set in [because of] these huge divisions in our country right now, and we were all motivated by the fact that we didn’t want our students to feel hopeless about their future. … Education is complex and affects and influences many areas of our society. We have a great deal of power in education, and I feel like now is as good a time as ever to use our power as educators [to create] a more just and equitable society.

What’s on your sabbatical to-do list?

I’ll be working with my social studies department this summer … to examine the curriculum and see if there’s anything we can do to make it more inclusive, maybe a little less Eurocentric, and make sure we’re truly representing a diverse spectrum of people. … The pedagogy is important, but I think forming relationships with students and finding out [how] they feel … is a really simple and honest way to get started, so I’m also working with the Human Civil Rights Committee to collect student voices about whether or not they think school is a place where people are treated fairly and equally. … I’ll be working with my school and district [on] an opportunity audit … to make sure [our] schools are concerned with equity, growth and social justice and are really modeling that in their own policies and interactions. … [It’s] a really awesome opportunity to have meaningful conversations about … restorative practices, how we discipline students, how we view justice, and how we can better represent a diverse spectrum of people. … I’ll be working with educators, examining personal policy management and practices to help them better understand the impact of equity and bias, while learning it myself at the same time. … I’ll also be building a website and blog to guide educators to some specific resources … on how to examine equity in their field.

Why is this work something that’s needed now, and in New Hampshire?

We’re not exempt from this work. … We do have diversity in New Hampshire, and we definitely have some systemic issues that need to be examined. … We’ve seen things evolve with equity in special education over the years … but when it comes to certain other obstacles that are more socially related … there are still some issues of equity. … We have to show some commitment to change, to examine the status quo, and to admit some groups still have a vast amount of privilege over other groups. As difficult as this conversation can be, it’s an important one. … I feel like people are getting a little more serious about tackling that work right now. The conversation is ripe.

What sustainable changes do you hope to see in the school system after your sabbatical is over?

I would love to see a commitment to equity work become self-sustaining and contagious in society … and I want to push and swing the pendulum toward that as much as I can during the sabbatical. … For me, it’s not about any one specific [goal]; it’s about sparking a movement and getting back to reexamining priorities within our schools that have been shuffled aside over the years. … We can’t keep pretending schools are a place where you walk in, get your basic skills served up, take a standardized test and go home. I think we all know the realities of school and the impact it has on our lives and personal development is greater than that. … There are people in New Hampshire who would … feel a real sense of hope knowing educators are committed to understanding [what these] equity issues are … and my hope is teachers will take action, and students will really know and believe their schools are advocating for them.

A funeral director talks about the impact of Covid-19

The Covid-19 pandemic put funeral homes in a unique predicament; while the increased number of deaths in the state led to an increased demand for end-of-life services, emergency orders from the governor significantly limited the services that the funeral homes could provide. Buddy Phaneuf, fourth-generation funeral director and president of Phaneuf Funeral Homes & Crematorium, which has five locations throughout New Hampshire and Vermont, discussed how funeral homes and families of deceased have been getting through the pandemic, and how funeral arrangements will be handled moving forward.

What restrictions were put on funeral homes during the state’s Stay-at-Home Order?

We were considered an essential business, so we were never legally mandated to close. … The original restrictions imposed by the state up until Monday [June 15] were that gatherings or services at funeral homes had to have under 10 people. We were also affected by restrictions on churches — a lot of them were closed and not allowing services — and cemeteries, which, at one point, only allowed two people to gather close to a grave.

What restrictions are in place now that the Stay-at-Home Order has been lifted?

The governor is limiting funeral homes to [using] 50 percent of their capacity, but we’re still not comfortable having that [many people]. Our main location in Manchester can accommodate 400 people. That means we are still allowed to have as many as 200 people there, and you just can’t effectively [enforce] social distance with 200 people. We’re doing everything on a case-by-case basis right now based on what makes the most practical sense for us. … We’re also doing all the common-sense stuff: social distancing, wearing masks, providing hand sanitizer, cleaning public rooms multiple times a day, using signage and multiple entrances and exits to manage the flow [of visitors].

What are some of the biggest challenges funeral homes have had to face during the pandemic?

Nearly a third of New Hampshire’s Covid-positive patients [who died] came through one of our facilities. Dealing with an extra 40 to 50 deaths a month is significant, plus all of the mixed messages we were getting from state, national and international [health organizations] about how Covid is spread. Can you get Covid from a deceased body? Can you have an open casket [service] for a deceased Covid patient? Some [health organizations] were saying one thing, and others were saying something else. … Another thing is that our staff has been on the frontlines [of the pandemic]. … They’ve had to go to homes where a person may have died of Covid, and the family members in those homes could potentially have Covid. We didn’t always have all of the PPEs [personal protective equipment] … so funeral home staff really put their neck on the line.

How has the pandemic impacted funeral homes, business-wise?

Funeral homes aren’t unique; they’ve been just as impacted by this pandemic as restaurants and retail shops and so many other businesses [have]. … We’ve lost hundreds of thousands of dollars of revenue. … Even though we’ve been serving more families, the families are downgrading their services. Instead of a traditional funeral, they’re doing a cremation. Instead of having a wake, they’re just going to the cemetery. The flowers, the limos, the processions — people aren’t doing that right now, and funeral homes rely on that to pay their basic expenses. … The reality is, a lot of the smaller mom-and-pop funeral homes have not been able to cover their expenses, and they will have to close.

How have families been handling funeral arrangements during the pandemic?

It runs the gamut. Some people want to have the big public service at a church with a big wake and a luncheon, so they’ve decided to wait a few months until they can have that. Other people didn’t want to delay things or drag things on for months. They said, ‘It is what it is, and we need to deal with it,’ and they had a small, private service. Some people decided to do a private service now and are planning to do a more public, celebration-of-life event later on.

Have you been able to accommodate families with special requests or unique circumstances during this time?

[We have been] thinking outside the box and coming up with some really interesting and creative ideas. … In one case, we had an open casket for a young person who passed away, and there were 200 people here. Of course, we couldn’t let 200 people in, so we let 10 people in at a time, and it was a whole-day event, but that was what we needed to do to help [the deceased’s] family and friends grieve and say goodbye. … We also have a camera in our chapel, so we’ve been able to do some livestream services. Families can either just watch the service or … we can set them up on Zoom. We actually did that for an immigrant family who wanted to have an overnight vigil because that’s part of their customs and traditions, but of course everyone couldn’t spend the night together, and a lot of family members were still in their native country, so we set up a camera in front of the casket with a Zoom [session]. Around 50 or 60 family members signed in over the course of the evening.