CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) — A neighborhood theater is hoping the public will step up to help out as the COVID-19 pandemic continues.
"Before COVID, we were presenting about 500 different events a year," said Lela Headd Dyrkacz, managing director of the Chopin Theatre in the Wicker Park neighborhood.
But now, with another wave of COVID-19, business has hit a bump in the road for the theater which first opened in 1918.
"We got some support from federal grants (in the beginning of the pandemic) but things are difficult now that we're entering into omicron. We have some productions that are either suspending or rescheduling or canceling all together,” Headd Dyrkacz told WBBM Newsradio.
Headd Dyrkacz explained that live theater requires months of planning in advance.
“And so when you have a cancellation or when you have to move things, it's just really devastating,” she said.
Now, a GoFundMe campaign is about halfway to its goal to raise $72,000 for the theater.
And Dyrkacz said art can help us through yet another wave.
"It's a real point of connection for people to sit in a space. To share an experience to talk about it. To meet and feel a part of a community,” she continued.
One of the unique things about Chicago, Headd Dyrkacz pointed out, is that it is “very much a city of neighborhood theaters” and if that disappears, the “dynamic of the city” would be altered.
“We won't have this creative class of people, the stimulation, and creativity and sophistication that the city offers to the world will kind of disappear," she said.
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