Actors and actresses sport masks and perform on and around an outdoor stage during a show for Lion King Jr. Friday evening at the Evergreen Playhouse in Centralia.
Nathan Crummett, playing Scar, performs on stage during an outdoor performance Friday evening at the Evergreen Playhouse in Centralia.
Jessica Crummett, playing Mufasa, rises during a performance for Lion King Jr. Friday evening at the Evergreen Playhouse in Centralia.
From left to right, Ari Hannum as Timon, Cael Best as Young Simba, and Justin Hazlett as Pumbaa perform during a show for Lion King Jr. Friday evening at the Evergreen Playhouse in Centralia.
Liam Clark stays in character as Ed sporting a hyena mask backstage as crew members prepare costumes during a performance of Lion King Jr. at the Evergreen Playhouse in Centralia.
Cael Best as Simba and Lenora Page as Nala perform during a show for Lion King Jr. Friday evening at the Evergreen Playhouse in Centralia.
Leah Clark leaps off a platform during a performance of Lion King Jr. at the Evergreen Playhouse in Centralia.
The youth theater organization TOAD — Theatre of Arts Discipline — held an outdoor performance of Lion King Jr. over the past two weekends and the producer and artistic director of the show, Kris Garrett, said that the kids and audience complied with all of the COVID-19 safety measures while enjoying the sold-out shows.
“It’s been a beautiful experience in this kind of icky time,” Garrett said. “It was hard but it was worth it because everything for kids is canceled right now. It was a great time.”
The TOAD summer camp was open to 17 children ages 7 to 16. The future of the summer camp and the Lion King Jr. show was unknown as COVID-19 restrictions were placed on events, but Garrett said that staff rallied together to create a plan and an environment that was safe for rehearsals and shows.
“We had taped out squares of the 17 kids that were all 6 feet apart for the rehearsals. All the kids wore masks all day long, along with the staff. We also hired a person to just do cleaning every hour,” she said. “It became super easy after day one. It became a natural thing.”
The shows were held over the past two weekends at 7 p.m. on Friday and at 2 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday on a stage that was built and set up in the Evergreen Playhouse parking lot. The six shows weren’t advertised in order to keep the number of attendees low. All of the show-goers are required to wear masks and sat at tables that were set up 6 feet apart.
“Our audience size is 30 and that was based on the guideline of no more than 30 people at a wedding and that’s actually for indoors so that’s why we felt 30 was safe for outdoors,” said Garrett.
She said that she wanted to make sure that the friends and family of all 17 performers were able to be there.
“We really were trying to create a safe way to do musical theater again,” she said. “We were super thankful for Lewis County who provided us with the hand sanitizer through Sandstone Distillery. That was super helpful and certainly saved our pocketbook.”
One of the artists on set painted all of the children’s face coverings to resemble the Lion King character that he or she was playing and each actor wore a puppetry style mask over top.
‘We’ve coined it the Lion King Jr. COVID-syle. We really tried to respect that 6-foot boundary on stage even though the kids wore masks. We were lucky that three of the kids that are leads happened to be siblings so we could block their marks off a little bit closer,” said Garrett.
The play was directed by Rich Garrett, Brynn Walker was the music director and mask-maker and Scarlet Nixon Klein created choreography with social distancing in mind.
After the play, the character’s papier-mache masks were auctioned off during a silent auction.
“We’ve had no complaints. We’ve had no pushback. It’s been everything I could’ve imagined it could be,” Garrett said.
The kids had a great time, Garrett said, and created new COVID-friendly theater games.
“They have created COVID-tag which is the silliest game you’ve ever played because all you’re doing is yelling out your friend’s name and saying they’re ‘it’. And then that child yells out the next one,” she said. “The kids have really rallied to have that other fun piece of the experience.”
Children from Centralia, Chehalis, Adna and Tenino participated in the TOAD summer camp.
“I really believed we could do this while keeping distance and wearing masks and we absolutely did,” Garrett said. “And it’s a great show. The kids love the story of The Lion King.”
