After the performance of “Little Girl Blue: The Nina Simone Story” on Saturday night, workers at Goodspeed descended to the outer tent in East Haddam, where performances were held throughout the summer.
“We had a situation on the bridge where a lot of people who might not have been there at 10 p.m. on a Saturday night showed up, and we emptied the tent of anything that was likely to blow up in the forecast winds. The tent itself is rated at 90 miles per hour, so we didn’t have to drop it, â€Goodspeed Musicals artistic director Donna Lynn Hilton said on Sunday.
They did, however, open up the sides to allow the wind to blow.
Goodspeed also encouraged everyone to leave the theater campus (some returned home to New York, for example), so there were only two people left on Sunday.
Another potential problem is the Goodspeed rehearsal studio, which was flooded during an abnormal storm in 2018. That storm sent about 5 inches of rain in a few hours, causing a flash flood. A stream usually flows under the rehearsal studio. In this case, a tree smashed a studio window and water flooded the back room, ironically called the waterfall room. The water was rushing so quickly that the waterfall room filled with 4-5 feet of water which eventually blew up the doors to the main rehearsal room and then the doors to the outside. He swept everything away; a piano floated on the banks of the stream and the sound equipment ended up half a mile away.
Ultimately, Hilton noted, the water in the creek comes from upstream at Goodspeed, so there’s little they can do except watch and wait.
“My next big concern is power,†said Hilton. “If we lose electricity at the Opera House, we have a generator, but we cannot use that generator where we are at the tent (in the Goodspeed parking lot).”
The next performance of “Little Girl Blue” is scheduled for Wednesday evening.
The Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center in Old Saybrook had less to do than Goodspeed, dismantling its patio tent and rescheduling two shows that had been scheduled for Sunday.
The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford, meanwhile, is fortunate to have wrapped up its summer performing season before Henry hits. All the lighting and sound equipment donated by PRG that transformed the outdoor amphitheater into a concert hall were returned to New York on Friday in four semi-trailers.
The Independent Hygiene Show
Saturday night on Bank Street in New London, activities were already impacted a few hours before Henri arrived. At Hygienic Art, where the establishment celebrated the opening of its exhibition “Salon des Indépendants” – normally held in January and postponed due to the pandemic – attendance was down, although large crowds gathered in the hall. ‘Art Park for the tangential “Hygienic Multi-group concert” Rock Fix “.
Inside the gallery, Hygiene President Vinnie Scarano said: “Even though the Sunday after opening is traditionally a big day, we’re not going to open (today) because of Henri . It’s a shame because we have a week of successful activities associated with the show and other events in the art park, and we’ve just started to gain momentum. So we hope for the best with this storm.
