Smith Center takes step toward reopening with Broadway series

Ask Myron Martin, president and CEO of The Smith Center for the Performing Arts, if that made it any easier to line up those productions a second time, and something akin to a guffaw spills forth from deep inside him.

“I’m laughing because none of it was easy,” he explains. “The whole thing was a nearly impossible jigsaw puzzle to make the tours work, and all of their routing, and our schedules.”

Reynolds Hall closed in March 2020 with the touring company of Broadway’s “Once on This Island.” It’s scheduled to be open once again by Oct. 12 for the arrival of “Cats.” The venue could reopen before then, though, depending on when it’s safe to do so at 100 percent capacity.

Whenever that day is, it can’t come soon enough for Martin.

“In all the years of me dreaming about what The Smith Center would do and how it would serve the community, this is not something that I ever contemplated, that we would be closed for an extended period. It’s just been terrible,” he says. “It has been the worst year of my life, professionally.”

‘A huge, huge task’

Monday’s announcement of the Broadway Las Vegas series is the first stop on a long road back for the performing arts hub.

Roughly 300 shows that had been on The Smith Center’s calendar had to be moved or canceled because of the pandemic. Some, more than once.

“They got booked, they got canceled. They got rebooked, they got canceled. Now they’re rebooked again,” Martin says, crediting Glenn Medas, vice president and chief operating officer, and his booking team. “Just to make all of those date changes was a huge, huge task for them.”

Typically, Broadway shows are booked two to three years in advance. On June 10, 2018, the night “The Band’s Visit” took home 10 of the 11 Tony Awards for which it was nominated, The Smith Center already had the touring version on its calendar for June 2020. Actually getting “The Band’s Visit,” which has been rescheduled for Feb. 15-20, 2022, back on the road during a pandemic, though, was a whole other beast.

“They’re dealing with different rules in different states and different governors with different plans,” Martin says of tour producers. “I can’t imagine being in their shoes trying to figure out when they can restart.”

Future step: Hiring

Reopening The Smith Center isn’t as simple as turning on the lights and throwing open the doors.

For starters, Martin and his team will have to rehire most of the support staff.

“We’ve had people furloughed for much of this period — furloughed and laid off. Human resources is going to have to hire back a whole bunch of people. That’s going to be a lot of work, just a lot of paperwork, to get everybody coming back.”

First, though, he’ll have to rehire the human resources department.

Martin is hoping to see as many familiar faces return as possible, but he knows some of them will have moved on to other jobs. Once the staff has been reassembled, they’ll need to be trained — or, in some cases, retrained — and go through orientation.

“It’s almost like opening all over again,” he notes.

That preparation doesn’t even get into the 52-page safety plan that covers a wide range of things such as electrostatic cleaning machines and UV cleaning devices that have been purchased, the new cashless technology at the bars, the paperless tickets and the digital programs that are in the works.

A fully booked season

“We’ve always said that theater is not something you do spread out,” Martin acknowledges. “It’s something you do for full houses.”

As such, he’s preparing to open The Smith Center at 100 percent capacity. When it comes to achieving that goal, Martin says he’s been encouraged by local vaccination efforts as well as by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s statement that he’s expecting full stadiums this fall.

“I think we’re going to be at a place where there’s not only pent-up demand, people wanting to get out,” Martin says of the fall months, “but a comfort level that, if I’ve been vaccinated and if I’m wearing a mask, I’ll be perfectly comfortable going to the theater.”

That mask, by the way, won’t be optional — at least for the foreseeable future.

Ever-evolving health mandates are the main reason Martin isn’t ready to announce anything beyond the Broadway Las Vegas series.

“I don’t mind telling you that our calendar is completely and fully booked for the rest of this upcoming season,” he says.

It’s just a matter of how deep into that calendar The Smith Center will have to go before it gets the all-clear to reopen.

Whenever that is, Martin says, he’s certain of one thing:

“When we come back, we’re going to come back with gusto.”

Contact Christopher Lawrence at clawrence@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4567. Follow @life_onthecouch on Twitter.