On Aug 2nd, the North Platte Community Playhouse(NPCP) concluded its run of Mamma Mia. Two weeks later, 24 members of the cast and crew have tested positive for COVID-19. Serious questions of how this happened are now being asked to NPCP officials who promised they were taking precautions despite there being evidence to the contrary.

Over the weekend, we reported on the COVID-19 outbreak occurring among the cast and crew of the ABBA jukebox musical at the Nebraska community theatre. Theatre leadership promised they were taking every precaution possible and yet, 24 of 38 people involved with the production now have COVID-19, including nine teenagers. That’s an infection rate of 63%.

So how did this happen? Who is to blame? What could have been done to prevent this?

After news of the outbreak within the theatre group was reported, board president Stu Shepard told local news,

“We are scared, devastated and we’re incredibly disappointed,” Shepherd said. “We followed all of the guidelines. I think the health department would tell you we went above and beyond to make sure that the audience was safe and the cast was safe. People were wearing masks, people were staying six-feet apart, and it still happened.”

But what Mr. Shepard is saying isn’t necessarily true.

Ther’s a lot to unpack here, but let’s start at the beginning.

The original run of NPCP’s Mamma Mia was supposed to take place earlier this spring, but the theatre shut down for five months in the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak. In June, with Nebraska being reported as “low risk” for COVID-19, rehearsals resumed.

According to sources connected with the production, temperatures of the cast and crew were taken before rehearsals and they were told to stay home and isolate if they felt symptoms associated with the coronavirus. I’m told that the theatre was thoroughly cleaned before and after rehearsals. It’s also been reported that masks were worn and social distancing occurred “when possible” during rehearsals.

However, COVID-19 doesn’t need multiple opportunities to spread, it just needs one and NPCP provided it.

On June 25th, the North Platte Telegraph ran a piece highlighting NPCP’s return to the stage. They included not only a picture of rehearsals but also a video as well. The cast and crew were singing and dancing in close contact with one another. No one was wearing a mask and no one was social distancing.

Here’s a photo of the rehearsal.

And here is video taken from that rehearsal. (Courtesy of Tim Johnson / The North Platte Telegraph)

Here’s another photo from a rehearsal a month later right before opening. Once again, no one is wearing a mask or socially distancing.

NPCP had also posted a promotional video for the production which showed another rehearsal with no masks or social distancing but that video has been deleted along with NPCP’s Facebook page.

So this leads me to ask, where were the precautions that the theatre said they were taking? If the cast and crew were only wearing masks and socially distancing when they weren’t on stage and leaving them vulnerable in the riskiest scenario of singing in each other’s faces, how is that exactly protecting them?

There is no logic in that. If it’s dangerous to be backstage without a mask, it’s absolutely dangerous to be on stage without one.

In contrast, a recent production of Godspell, one of the first approved by Actor’s Equity, showed socially distanced rehearsals and both the cast and audience wearing masks. While that is a professional production, the ability to social distance and wear face coverings consistenly isn’t dependent on Equity status.

Choreographer Gerry McIntyre leads the cast during a July 29 rehearsal for "Godspell" in Berkshire Theatre Group's parking lot in Pittsfield. BRYAN DERBALLA - THE NEW YORK TIMES

And this is just during the rehearsal period, the performances were a whole other issue.

Leading up to the performances, the theatre publicized what precautions they would take for audience members. The audience capacity of 800 was reduced to 200, concessions were only sold prior to the show and there would be no cast meet & greets after. The theatre was also thoroughly cleaned before and after each performance.

However, audience members were not required to wear masks when attending performances. Board president told local news that masks were instead “encouraged”. The irony of Mr. Shepard, pictured here wearing a mask when talking to local news, is not lost on me.

Co-Director Tyler Cronin also told local news, "One of the things that we're saying as directors is to hopefully have people keep that six-foot distance away. If they feel comfortable wearing those masks, we want them to be wearing masks if they feel inclined to.”

A person who attended a performance of the show told me that ticket salespeople and ushers were not wearing masks and only a “handful” of audience members were.

And the worst part is, apparently this all could have been avoided because the theatre could have required masks for the audience but chose not to.

While Nebraska governor Pete Ricketts has argued against masks and even tried to prevent local governments from mandating them. there is nothing I’ve read that prevents private businesses from requiring them within their places of operation. Private businesses like North Platte Community Playhouse.

I asked officials at NPCP as to why they didn’t require masks for audiences but those emails have not been responded to.

The fact that face masks help prevent the spread of COVID-19 is not up for debate at this point. Health experts say the evidence is clear that masks can help prevent the spread of COVID-19 and that the more people wearing masks, the better. Multitudes of laboratory studies have been done of respiratory droplets and the ability of various masks to block them.

Without masks, the scenario of hundreds of people in a small confined space with singing and dancing(which leads to heavy breathing), is scary to think about.

Mr. Shepard said that they worked with and followed recommendations from the West Central District Health Department to prepare to reopen and their reopening plan was approved by the organization.

One of the sources for the confusion over precautions was the lack of information posted on the theatre’s website about the precautions and rules for attending performances.

A screenshot shows a diagram on NPCP’s website but offers no other information.

While they illustrate that masks are “encouraged” and that rows will be dismissed by the theatre one by one, it doesn’t provide warnings for certain people not to attend. While the WCDHD doesn’t provide public guidelines for theatres, it does for similar venues such as houses of worship and arenas.

Some of those guidelines include,

Encourage those who are sick or at risk to stay home. This includes:

The elderly
People with underlying medical conditions
Family members who live with elderly people or those who are at risk
People who have access to those at risk in nursing institutions
People who have upper respiratory or flu-like symptoms
People who live with someone with upper respiratory or flu-like symptoms
People with COVID-19 or live with someone with COVID-19
People who have been exposed to someone with COVID-19

While the theatre might have been taking precautions within their space, they did little to nothing to prevent someone infected from coming in. According to the audience member I spoke with, their temperatures were not checked upon entering the theatre.

Questions have also been raised about the cleaning of the theatre.

“We worked until midnight to clean the theater after every performance and we had a checklist that we went through,” Mr. Shepherd told local news. “The people that cleaned had to sign off that they completed every one of those tasks so we did the best that we could and it still happened.”

But what needs to be asked is who was cleaning the theatre? Volunteers involved with the production or cleaning professionals with expertise on how to disinfect these types of spaces with specialized chemicals and techniques?

It should be the latter, absolutely not the former. We’re in the middle of a pandemic and the sterilization of a space after a mass gathering shouldn’t be left to volunteers checking off a list as if they were cleaning a Starbucks bathroom.

I don’t know the details of what it takes to get approval by the WCDHD to resume operations but one would think that it would have to include most, if not all, of what’s mentioned above. Also, if social distancing and masks were part of that approval process, NPCP clearly wasn’t adhering to that given what we saw happening in rehearsals.

I’m not being nitpicky when mentioning this. These are just measures other theatres have taken to resume operations, and even some of them are still getting disapproval from health departments and Actor’s Equity.

The WCDHD is now investigating what happened at the theatre.

But that’s all little too late given the fact that the majority of the cast and crew have now tested positive for COVID-19. Something clearly went terribly wrong here and further proves the risks of trying to perform theatre without a vaccine.

I understand the desire to return to normalcy and that theatre is a big part of that. But no theatre performance, community or Broadway, is worth getting sick over.

Now, a community that had been able to keep their COIVD-19 numbers relatively low(less than 200 infected), face a potential outbreak that could have been entirely avoided.

24 castmembers and crew of 'Mamma Mia' test positive for COVID-19 What happened? Who's to blame?

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