Brandon Ehrenreich
That Sense of Magic

The purpose of this project is to provide a collection of transcriptions from the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. This project seeks to give a platform to all parts of the vocal performing arts to better understand the lived experiences and mentality of those professionals. In collecting stories from the COVID-19 pandemic Brandon Ehrenreich, stage manager, discussed the abrupt shift both as he entered the pandemic and, in his addendum, as theatre began to emerge.

TB: I like to start on a positive note, so what is the best thing that has happened to you in the last week?

BE: This past week, I've been doing a lot of the same thing, which has been sitting home, reading, playing Animal Crossing, and walking my dogs.

TB: What have you been reading?

BE: I've been trying to get through all the plays I bought in college. I often had to buy an anthology for just one play, and I would never look at the rest. So, I am trying to read all that stuff. I am trying to get through every book I own, which is always impossible for people who read.

TB: Could you talk a little bit about your career and where you are now?

BE: It was the end of my 10th year being a stage manager and working in opera when the virus started being a thing. I've been at my hometown company that whole time—Arizona Opera—and I started working under AGMA contracts four years ago, mainly over the summer. I started assistant stage managing, and recently I began calling shows at different companies [Calling shows means being the primary stage manager].

TB: Do you delve into musical theater as well? BE: Only if an opera company does a musical theater piece. I've done a couple of Sondheim shows and Guys & Dolls years ago, but otherwise, it is pretty much opera and operetta, exclusively.

TB: What is one of your favorite shows so far?

BE: At Arizona Opera, we did Arizona Lady, which no one has ever heard of, but it is a German operetta from the 1950s, and the libretto was set in Tucson. It originally premiered as a radio play, but we performed it in Tucson. So, we got to do the show that was set in Tucson, in Tucson. I also worked on the premiere of Breaking the Waves, which was a total ah-ha moment: this is what I should be doing with my life moment. It has since gone on to have great success as well.

TB: Where were you, and how did you first realize that the COVID pandemic would affect your life and career?

BE: In the spring, I usually work at Arizona Opera. In fact, the final run of a show we did through closing night was Riders of the Purple Sage. When we were in Tucson for the performances, people started to notice the virus in the United States. The other assistant stage manager in the crew and I talked, and we wondered what would happen with the next shows. Like, were they going to happen? Then we started rehearsals for Ariadne Auf Naxos, and the singers had flown in from out of town. Even on the first day of music rehearsal, we talked about whether the show would be cancelled during our breaks. It didn't feel right. It felt like hanging around school after it has been let out.
      We rehearsed for a week and then we found out that the show had to be cancelled. The governor of Arizona mandated that there couldn't be more than 500 people in a room together at that point. We all knew that this couldn't happen, but we were still rehearsing and just wondering...

TB: So I know that you live in Arizona, which doesn't affect much of your logistics, but could you tell me about dealing with the rehearsal and issues that may go unnoticed in the day-to-day operations?

BE: We always clean the rehearsal room when we set up, but this time we were using Clorox wipes for the piano keys and cleaning all the music stands we used on the first day of music. This was the first time that we ever had to wipe them down.
      The other thing was our studio artists were in the show and in town already, but everyone else flew in from somewhere else. So on the first day, all of these people had just flown in from all over the place—in fact, our director flew in from outside the country—and having all of those energies in the room together just felt weird.

TB: You already mentioned that production was cancelled. Would you mind elaborating on that and talking about how this affects you financially?

BE: Right now, I am on contract to go to the Opera Theatre of St. Louis and Wolf Trap Opera. Both companies have given the "We are monitoring the situation" statements. St Louis is the first and earliest festival of all the opera festivals. So whatever they do, they are going to set a precedent for the other festivals that follow.
      Des Moines Metro Opera—which I do not work for—put out statements saying that even if they have to cancel the festival, they will honor all their contracts and pay everyone in full. They are the first company that has put out a statement like that, which is really lovely. Those statements make me feel hopeful that other companies might follow suit or even offer a partial payment. But right now, it is playing a waiting game. Nothing has officially been cancelled yet.
      On the other hand, the first email we received from St. Louis said, "Our costume and scene shop is supposed to start work in two weeks, but we can't gather for at least a month." Reading that email, I was thinking, "If the sets and the costumes are behind by two weeks, they are not going to be able to catch up. So what is the point? It can't happen if we don't have costumes and sets." The first group of performers and crew are supposed to start in about three weeks, and we still don't know if that will happen.
      I don't really know how this is going to affect me financially yet. But I would be shocked if I'm supposed to go to St. Louis. It just doesn't seem like it is going to happen.

TB: Can you talk about how stage managers are paid and how the pandemic might affect that?

BE: Sure, at my two summer gigs, I am on an AGMA contract. That is a fixed weekly rate, and then after a certain amount of hours, you earn overtime. That happens typically during tech. It is a pretty reliable amount to make a budget.
      At Arizona Opera, it is non-union, and I am paid hourly. (I am not sure how the singers were compensated who were there for a week. I think it was partial, but I am unsure.) So I was paid hourly for the whole first week of rehearsals. Then after the show was cancelled, my boss felt terrible for the other ASMs and me, so she found a lot of spring cleaning jobs for us to do around the building. For example, we were going through closets and organizing the music library. I am fortunate that I am only missing out a little bit financially because we still had all this other stuff to do.

TB: That is wonderful to hear. I know you do work a lot with Arizona Opera, so finding that community and support is essential. What would you say is the hardest lesson that you have learned so far in this situation?

BE: It has been hard to make people take this seriously without becoming angry at them. I really struggle with it personally because my dad is only slowly starting to realize its severity. I am trying to show them graphs and point to where we are compared to what other countries are doing. But it is tough for me not to be upset about people not taking this seriously and seeing people throwing parties. It is disrespectful.

TB: That is a very fair point. Could you talk about how you are preparing for your summer work? Are you thinking about that yet?

BE: For the summer, we don't even get our scores until we show up. So there is a built-in prep time. All I can do right now is wait around for it to start. Conversely, the singers have their scores and are preparing for a long time before the show.
   Right now, I am trying to find other creative things to do while I'm sitting around at home. I am trying not to lose my mind through coloring books and that stuff. But it is not the same as the creative outlet of being around a rehearsal. Now, I don't know when my next day of rehearsal will be, and that is scary.

TB: Could you talk about the sewing project that you are taking on now?

BE: Yes, I am sewing medical masks because I have a stockpile of fabric that I have been trying to get through from making button-up shirts. With all the scraps, I am making masks. I have a friend who is a nurse in town, and she will take them to work and distribute them. She has told me that they really need them. That is another way not to lose my mind—I can already sew one in 20 minutes.

TB: That is faster than I can sew one. Could you reflect on your life on February 1 and tell me a bit about how your life was different at that point?

BE: I would say that on February 1, the coronavirus was just a meme. It was all about Corona beer, and I certainly didn't understand how serious it was. It just seems so far away, both in distance and time. I only had a vague understanding of what it was, and certainly, no one was behaving differently then. It was two shows ago, but we were in performances for La Bohème, and everything was great.

TB: How has this experience changed you?

BE: I'd like to think I was always someone that washed my hands with more frequency than other people. But now, I have gone overboard. And I never really focused on cleaning the backs of my hands. I am also super paranoid about touching my face.
      But I feel like we are all different now. We are wired differently and more aware of things. For example, there is always a big hug from my boss at the end of the season. But at the last show... well we didn't have the end of the last show. We had the end of our spring cleaning, and we had to air hug at a distance. Even after this is all over, we will be a little paranoid about physical contact and proximity to others.

TB: How do you think this may change your life as a stage manager going forward?

BE: I don't know yet. It is almost too early to tell. So far, I've only really lost the one show. Once this is over, and we are cleared to go back to work and rehearsal, that is when we can start to think about next season. It is not going to be the green light, and then we start rehearsal next week. These things have to be planned out months or years in advance.
      Before this happened, I was burnt out from stage management and wondering if I wanted to be doing this with my life. Then the virus happened, and I started to worry that what I do can disappear at the drop of a hat... It is pretty extraordinary right now. The fact that the whole industry can disappear so quickly makes me wonder what I can do outside the industry. Such worry has to exist in this type of situation. Everyone I know that is in either the theater or in the restaurant business is out of work right now. It is terrible because I love what I do, and I don't want to do anything other than this. But there is no stability.

TB: Is that something that you are looking into?

BE: I have thought about it. Because everyone is getting food delivered right now, I could do that. Or I could choose not to put myself and others at risk every time I leave the house. Almost every job involves putting yourself and everyone you live with at risk, which is so hard.
      I am still waiting to see what I need to do. I was actually in the process of buying a property in the past couple of months, which means I have pretty good savings right now. I would love not to spend through it, though it is there if I need it. But I think I'd rather use my savings than work at the Amazon factory in Phoenix, where everyone will touch stuff and cough. I don't want to put myself at risk.

TB: How do you think that the pandemic will change the musical landscape moving forward?

BE: I haven't given a lot of thought to that yet. I think people are being rightfully paranoid about gathering in large groups. That is a massive issue for us, especially because our audience base is typically older. They're not going to attend a show until everything is over and clean. So, I see people being less likely to attend shows because of that.
      I also think it's great that there has been so much live streaming and people putting shows on the internet. The public is responsive to that, and it is a totally viable way to consume art. I think that is going to change the landscape and is a prominent option for the future.

TB: What challenges do you foresee for opera companies moving into a future with live streaming?

BE: A lot of companies have a union chorus, orchestra, crew, and everything. So to get anything streaming is a huge undertaking. The Met has streaming built into all of their separate contracts because that is something that they regularly do. But for many smaller companies, if they even want to record, they can't just stream it online because of the union's rules. So to do this, they would have to rewrite all their contracts to allow for video broadcasting.
      We did a premiere at Arizona Opera called Riders of the Purple Sage, and someone wanted to make a documentary about producing an opera for the first time. So, we had a camera crew in most of our rehearsals and backstage. They were everywhere, and it was cool but also a pain. The filming required the documentary producers to get permission from so many people. They had to get approval from every crew member working on the show in both of the cities we performed. It was also a negotiation with the orchestra because they wanted to use the orchestra playing as the underscore in the documentary. When contracts are negotiated in the future, the possibility of streaming will be added for performers.

TB: What is your advice to the musical community at this point?

BE: I think musicians are doing what they can and should be doing at this point, which is making music happen. I don't know what stage managers are doing right now, not to lose their minds and keep the momentum going, but that is really important. Don't lose that sense of magic. And keep wanting to do this.

TB: I want to thank you for speaking with me today. Last question, what is your video streaming recommendation?

BE: Easy answer, I started Schitt's Creek, and I am rewatching Star Trek: Voyager. Voyager is my favorite series in the Star Trek universe.

TB: Thank you again for the wonderful talk today.

Addendum: August 12, 2021

When Mr. Ehrenreich and I spoke last, America was on the brink of a pandemic that remains ongoing. The assumption was that this would last for a month or maybe two; now, we celebrated the one-year anniversary and currently experiencing the Delta variant’s effects. This has caused a radical shift in circumstances, and he was kind enough to share a few details.
      In March of 2020, he was living in Arizona; however, he has since made the cross-country move to Philadelphia, PA. Specifically, he stated that this was an opportunity caused by his lack of work as a stage manager. This lack of work was ended when Opera Theatre of Saint Louis held its spring festival. Mr. Ehrenreich noted that this was the first opera that he had worked on since the pandemic.
      Opera Theatre of Saint Louis took many precautions to ensure the safety of their staff, audience, and performers. Mr. Ehrenreich wrote, “Everyone was in masks right up until the performers hit the stage.” Furthermore, the four different shows were held in isolation to prevent the spread of COVID-19 from cast to cast, and during rehearsals, there was a mandatory 30-minute time that allowed the rehearsal room to ventilate. At that time, no one was allowed into the rehearsal space. These precautions were in addition to a health screening before anyone was allowed to enter the building. Though this was an added responsibility and may have created administrative work, Mr. Ehrenreich was equally enthused about having put on a festival.
      The pandemic has been a unique moment for the world, and in reading through his transcript, Mr. Ehrenreich reflected that he wished he would have known how long the pandemic would last. One of the specifics that he wrote about was, “Back then, there was talk of ‘after the pandemic,’ and now it is looking like ‘after’ is not a reality we will be facing.” Our global community has shifted, and the operatic world has had to adapt to these changes that continue to make rehearsals and performance demanding.

I am Arizona Opera — Brandon Ehrenreich