City Lit Covid-19 Policy
**We understand everyone is not comfortable being in a crowd without masks yet, so City Lit still requires masks for our Sunday matinee performances. Masks are encouraged but no longer required for Friday, Saturday and our 2 Monday performances. City Lit staff will continue to mask for all performances. If you have already made a reservation and because of this information you'd like to switch performances, please let us know and we'd be happy to reschedule you. This policy is subject to change and we will always adhere to guidelines and regulations from the city, county, state or federal level.
1. We will strictly follow CDC recommendations in all matters. If this means we should cancel performances, we will cancel them. If it doesn't mean that, we won't. For example, during the rehearsal period for THE VIRGINIAN, a cast member tested positive for Covid; it turned out to be a false positive, as his subsequent six tests over the next few days all proved negative. (He was already fully vaccinated and boosted, and never developed any symptoms.) We followed the pertinent CDC guideline, which is: "People who are fully vaccinated do not need to quarantine after contact with someone who has Covid-19 unless they have symptoms. However, fully vaccinated people should get tested five to seven days after their exposure even if they don't have symptoms." So if that positive test accompanied by no symptoms had been accurate and had occurred during our performance run, I would not have cancelled any performances. On the other hand, in the unlikely event that any cast or crew member tests positive and reports symptoms, I will cancel as many performances as necessary to make sure we get back on solid ground--even if that means the entire rest of the run.
2. The CDC and every single other authority are unanimous that the best protection against contracting Covid-19 is to get the vaccine. Everybody working at City Lit is fully vaccinated.
During THIRTEEN DAYS, our first show back, we were one of the few theatres in town that required audiences to show proof of full vaccination, with no exceptions made for religious or medical reasons, and with no substitution of a negative test result allowed. The audience responded quite well to this, as a tighter policy is obviously more likely to keep them safe. It seemed clear that people were more comfortable coming here than they would have been with a more lax policy in place.
3. The CDC says that, second only to vaccination, the most important thing is ventilation (or air filtration if you can't ventilate). Our theatre space has windows along one wall, so we can ventilate quite easily. We will continue what we have been doing since re-opening, which was to open windows after each performance and use fans to move air in and out to circulate new fresh air in for the next performance. The CDC estimates that, depending on the size of the room, good ventilation should take 60 to 90 minutes to achieve a 100% exchange of old air for new; we let ours run for twelve hours.
We think these three points—along with observing any official guidelines in place at the time—will keep our space a safe place to be and allow us to keep our season on track.
If you have tickets to a performance and start to have Covid symptoms, have tested positive for Covid or believe you may have been exposed, please contact us. We can reschedule you to a different date or issue refunds where necessary. We will treat every situation with as much flexibility as possible.
Best regards,
Terry McCabe
Producer and Artistic Director
