How it started, how it's going: Entertainment professionals share pandemic stories

From Broadway performers to local theater groups, Hollywood stars to indie filmmakers, national touring acts to bar bands, the pandemic had a devastating effect on the entertainment industry.

The sudden shuttering of bars, concert halls, movie theaters and other venues — some permanently — led to widespread loss of revenue and jobs in every aspect of the industry.

“I very vividly remember the day that everything changed,” said Robin Elrod, director of public relations and communications for the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust. “It was Friday the 13th of March, which was very fitting.

“We were in mid-run of (the PNC Broadway in Pittsburgh musical) ‘The Band’s Visit’ when we had to make the call to shut it down. Then we had to cancel or postpone all of our shows through April,” she said. “I started working from home on March 17, and I’ve been home ever since.

“It’s been a wild time for the performing arts, to say the least.”

It’s a story told across the industry, call after call, cancellation after cancellation, with no idea of how long the shutdown would last — or how the industry would rebound when it ended.

The lone bright spot might have been how quickly performers, businesses and organizations turned to livestreaming to continue providing consumers with content and themselves with income and exposure.

According to Forbes, digital entertainment revenue in the U.S. totaled $26.5 billion in 2020, a 33% increase from 2019. In contrast, theatrical entertainment dropped from $11.4 billion in 2019 to $2.2 billion in 2020.

Now, the return to live entertainment is beginning.

The Happy Together Tour, featuring members of several popular 1960s bands, has a July 30 date at The Palace Theatre in Greensburg. Name acts coming in August include Gordon Lightfoot, The Righteous Brothers and Ronnie Milsap.

“We are excited to begin welcoming back national touring shows to the region,” said April Kopas, CEO of Westmoreland Cultural Trust, which operates the venue. “We have already announced three new tours following the governor’s announcement to lift mitigation orders on Memorial Day and anticipate more shows to be announced in the next few weeks.”

Pittsburgh Cultural Trust will welcome back its first indoor audience for a Sept. 26 performance by The Mavericks in the Byham Theater in downtown Pittsburgh. “The Band’s Visit” will return to the Benedum Center for a run beginning Oct. 28.

Film production also resumed in the city, said Dawn Keezer, director of the Pittsburgh Film Office. “Rust,” Jeff Daniels’ new series for Showtime, is among projects underway again.

While local film production has resumed, Keezer said it will take time to get the industry back up to pre-pandemic speed.

“We still don’t know what will happen in the future,” she said. “This is what we kept saying: This is our first pandemic. Next time, we’re going to be better at it.”

Folks in the Western Pennsylvania entertainment industry shared some of their pandemic experiences, from how it felt when it first hit to how they made it through to what they foresee in the near future.

Brian Drusky

Owner of Drusky Entertainment

Concert promoter Drusky says he went from “going 100 miles per hour all the time to having literally almost nothing to do.”

“When you go about doing over 500 shows a year — that means plenty of events a week — to just be shut down and be doing nothing is a shock, a real big shock,” he said.

Drusky said he didn’t think the shutdown of the entertainment industry would last as long as it did.

“The thought process was that we would be back in business in June,” he said. “As it kept going on, things kept pushing. We thought it would definitely be back in the fall of 2020, and then that didn’t happen. It was frustrating.

“And then we started pushing things to the spring of 2021, and then those started getting pushed; but as this was all going on, we were hoping we would somehow, some way, be back to normal soon.”

Drusky said his 2020 income went down 70% from the previous year and the same amount from an average year. He had to lay off all but one of his employees.

“We would have been down more, but we came up with ideas to do outdoor, socially distant events to help make the ends meet,” he said. “I did take out (a Covid-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan) that helped get through months of not-normal income.

“The whole industry is looking for things to open up by the fall,” he said. “Pennsylvania is going to be open up fully at the beginning of June (with people wearing masks), and a lot of other states are following suit; so we should be getting back to normal very soon.

“I think, for the time being, you are going to have some people that don’t want to go to crowded venues, but there are people who are vaccinated and ready to get out there and enjoy live music.”

Derek Woods

Musician and event promoter

The only good thing about the pandemic for the entertainment industry was that it happened in the digital age, said Derek Woods, a Greensburg-based musician and event promoter.

“If it had happened 20 years ago without the internet, it would have been totally different,” said the Derek Woods Band front man.

As it was, he said, at least the industry turned rapidly to livestreaming to make up some of the income lost from live events being canceled.

His band “had a full summer, a full year planned, and it was all taken away,” Woods said. “Everyone was used to playing four or five days a week. Everyone was used to being in an autopilot head frame, and then everything was taken away.”

He and his band mates used the down time to work on a new album, “Picture Yourself,” that will be released this summer. Instead of their usual practice of working together in person, members worked on songs remotely before reuniting in the studio.

“The songs came from this time that we had to stop and reflect on ourselves,” Woods said. “That’s all we had.”

Woods and his band mates supplemented lost music revenue with other income sources. Woods does digital media transfers and graphic design for websites, logos, T-shirts and other items under the business name Into the Woods. Other band members are music teachers who pivoted to giving virtual lessons, he said.

Their performance calendar is starting to fill up for the remainder of 2021. The majority of dates look to be outdoor shows and festivals.

“We’re easing back into it, getting back to normal,” Woods said. “I honestly think it might be better than before. People really appreciate live music. They’ve missed it and they’re ready for it.”

Jennifer Lucas

Owner of Star Design Event Services

The Cranberry-based business “is known as one of the larger lighting companies in the region,” said owner Jennifer Lucas.

In addition to lighting, the company provides video screens and projectors; atmospherics such as fog, snow and confetti cannons; and equipment rental including stages, podiums, hoists, rigging and more.

Clients include The Meadows and Mountaineer casinos, corporate event planners, concert promoters and high school and college musical productions.

When the pandemic shutdown hit, Lucas had a crew in Huntingdon, W. Va., setting up for a concert that night by the classic rock band America.

“I got a text at 8 a.m. from the promoter saying, ‘Tear it down,’” she said. “The phone rang all day, call after call, cancellation after cancellation. I must have had 20 or 25 calls.

“That was the start of it. In three days, my whole calendar was cleared.”

“I can say that I lost about 80% (of normal revenue) last year,” Lucas said. “This year, if nothing goes wrong with covid and the situation keeps improving, I look to be at about 60% of normal revenue.”

“People don’t realize that it takes quite a lot of money just to keep the doors of a business open,” she said. “I survived, but I’m carrying some debt now.

“It will take at least two good years to get back to where I was before this happened,” she said. “I hope people realize what a hit the entertainment industry has taken.”

Becky Zeigler-Koch

Theater professional

Zeigler-Koch primary works as a substitute teacher in the Greensburg Salem School District, but she has a finger in various pies in the local theater community.

In addition to acting, the Greensburg resident is on the board of Greensburg Civic Theatre and also directs their children’s plays. She teaches weekend classes and summer camps for The Theatre Factory in Trafford.

In March 2020, Zeigler-Koch was doing lighting and artistic design for the Greensburg Salem Middle School musical.

“A week before tech week, they told us, ‘Everyone has to go home and you can’t come back,’” she said.

The shutdown was a double whammy for her family, as her husband is a lighting designer and technician for Star Design Event Services, based in Cranberry.

“Everything on the books for his work was gone, just gone,” she said. “We started looking into streaming. We thought, we have to do something, we can’t just sit around.”

Their first foray into streaming involved Zeigler-Koch donning costumes at home and reading children’s stories on YouTube. The couple also produced livestreams for some local bands.

As restrictions have eased and live entertainment and audiences are returning, Koch said she is cautiously optimistic for the industry.

“Watching a movie and seeing those credits roll, those are specialized jobs,” she said. “Those hundreds of names, they (haven’t had) jobs, and I’m kind of afraid for the future of those jobs.”

Zeigler-Koch said, just as the pandemic made potential audience members leery of going back to entertainment venues, it’s had the same effect — for different reasons — on industry workers.

“The lighting and sound companies are looking at an extreme shortage of people wanting to take those jobs,” she said. “A lot of the people in the industry are gig workers, and I think a lot of them have gone to jobs like virtual customer service and grocery delivery, things that give them a little more control and stability.

“It would be hard to leave a job with the same pay, benefits and more stability.”

DeWayne Segafredo

Owner of Spectrum Audio Productions

Segafredo started his Cranberry-based business straight out of high school in 1993, working with local bands and clubs.

Over the years, he moved up to providing “anything that has to do with audio, lighting, staging and video” to larger clients, including festivals and corporate events.

“In 2019, we had our best year to date, at least a one-half to two-thirds increase over 2019, and we were looking at the same expansion in 2020,” he said. “I lost over $2 million in shows in two days. I just sat by the phone taking cancellation after cancellation.”

He laid off all but two employees, got a Paycheck Protection Program loan and “jumped with both feet into livestreaming” for local theaters, high school musicals, anything that brought in some business.

“I haven’t been in business this long to let things fall apart,” he said.

It doesn’t pay for national touring acts to go on the road until venues are back at 100% capacity, he said. While gigs are starting to come back, he’s struggling to hire freelancers. In a normal summer, he would employ about 30.

“(Freelance jobs) can screw up their unemployment, so we don’t hold it against them,” he said.

Companies like his “are all in the same boat, just a little further in debt,” he said. “The hardest thing is to keep a positive attitude and help my employees keep a positive attitude.”

Dawn Keezer

Director, Pittsburgh Film Office

The mission of the nonprofit PFO is to attract film projects to Southwestern Pennsylvania, and Keezer reports that the area film industry is alive and well.

“By now, everyone has run through their Netflix and Amazon shows, so there’s a big content demand,” she said. “There’s so much work out there, which is great for our businesses and our communities.”

In addition to Showtime’s “Rust,” projects underway in Pittsburgh include “Archive 81” from Netflix, “A League of Their Own” from Amazon and Billy Porter’s “What If?”

During the pandemic shutdown, Keezer and her two PFO colleagues kept busy “cleaning and organizing and checking in with our crews, clients and corporate sponsors,” she said. They updated the location library and crew lists on the organization’s website and took turns stopping in at the office while working from home.

They mounted a virtual version of the PFO’s signature “Lights! Glamour! Action!” Oscar-themed fundraising event.

“We netted over $250,000,” Keezer said. “It wasn’t as much as usual, but it was still great, and we’re grateful for everyone who supported us.”

On a personal level, Keezer said,”I found (the pandemic) scary, as most people did. There were so many unknowns.”“

Both she and her son have asthma. Her husband underwent a surgery during the year. She also lost her father in December, although his death was not related to covid, and she was unable to travel to Virginia for his memorial service.

Robin Elrod

Director of public relations and communications, Pittsburgh Cultural Trust

Performers aren’t the only ones who need improvisational skills, as Elrod and other Trust staffers learned during the pandemic.

“The crazy part of my job was that it totally turned into (monitoring) news of the virus and its effects, understanding what other organizations were saying and doing and using that to inform what we were doing at the Trust,” she said. “How could we achieve our mission and communicate it without being in person?”

The first test came with shifting the Three Rivers Arts Festival to a virtual platform.

“We start planning for it in November of the year prior, and we were only a couple months out when that got turned on its head,” she said. “But that set the stage for our other virtual programs.

“The loss of revenue put us in a sticky financial area, and that shows how different our industry is,” she said. “It was one of the first to shut down and is likely to be the last to resume fully.

“So much prep time goes into presenting a show, and the only way these shows work is to have 100% capacity,” she said.

Now looking at the return of live entertainment, Elrod said, “Hope is probably the biggest emotion I’m feeling right now. It’s a joy to see the Trust family getting back to the heart of our mission.

“You realize there’s nothing better than being at a live show with those feelings of joy and togetherness,” she said. “At the same time, I’m nervous about keeping people safe because we don’t want another surge. I think vaccination is one of the biggest ways to get the live arts back.”

If the pandemic itself wasn’t enough of a life-changer, Elrod also became a first-time mother when she and her husband, Kevin, welcomed son Miles on April 17, 2020.

Being able to work from home throughout has been another blessing for both of them. Kevin Elrod is an attorney with Reed Smith LLP.

“We’ve seen so many of our son’s milestones that we would have missed, because he would have been in daycare,” she said. “I’ve been trying to soak in all of those moments. It’s been the best of both worlds.”