Contactless ticketing means a shuttered box office, but moviegoers walking through the lobby doors and into Tampa Theatre this weekend will notice that most everything else about the historic movie palace appears remarkably familiar. Spring cleaning, only made possible by a year without in-person screenings, mostly went down in nooks that only the five resident ghosts regularly access. Still, one of Tampa Bay’s most iconic buildings will seem just a bit foreign to even the most devout supporter, and that subtle change isn’t onscreen, on the walls, or in the PA. It’s in the air.
“I’m trying to think of a way to say this that’s kind of whimsical, but some of our repeat guests may have noticed that the building—being almost 100 years old—had a distinctive smell from time to time,” James DeFord told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay. The theater’s Manager for Marketing & Community Relations is laughing because in the past that unique aroma usually made itself known when it was a bit humid inside.
The Father
Tampa Theatre, 711 N Franklin St., Tampa
March 11-12, 18-19 (Thursdays and Fridays), 7:30 p.m.
March 13 & 20 (Saturdays), 4 p.m. & 7:30 p.m.
March 14 & 21 (Sundays), 3 p.m. & 6:30 p.m.
Tickets are available for online only at tampatheatre.org
But that special scent has now been mitigated and virtually eliminated thanks to a new HVAC system which the theater desperately needed, even before the pandemic, to help preserve the building. As part of a collaborative “Prevention Response Outreach Program” led by Tampa General Hospital, the new air conditioning was the biggest of all the essential moving elements that make up the Tampa Theater’s “STARS” plan to reopen safely.
“The ability to get air moving around better has made it so that the smell is a little less library, a little more normal,” DeFord chuckled, adding that the unique skeleton of the structure meant that parts for the HVAC had to be custom built.
Jokes aside, DeFord and the theater team are taking a deep breath themselves because on March 11, the 1,200-seat auditorium welcomes cinephiles back inside exactly one year to the day after closing them out due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “The Father,” nominated four times at the 2021 Golden Globes, will screen for a maximum of 200 fans on opening night. Those fans, like so many others who’ve returned to live sporting events and outdoor concerts, will sit socially distanced thanks to blocked off seats and get their temperatures checked by a touch-free forehead scanner (anyone with a temperature of 100.4 or higher will be sent away). They’ll wear masks unless seated and eating or drinking concessions ordered via mobile phone app, and they’re expected to gather in groups of no larger than six.
The movie screens 11 more times on seven separate days until March 21. Tampa Theatre president and CEO John Bell called the initial screenings a “test balloon.” If the test goes well, then those fans—and anyone else comfortable enough to go the movies as the world gets vaccinated and slinks out from underneath this once-in-a-century pandemic—will keep returning, increasingly, at what’s easily one of the most iconic theaters in the world.
“We have plans for the next two or three films that we would show, we try to do these Oscar-nominated shorts every year... but nothing is solid yet,” DeFord said. “If this first weekend goes well, and people are excited, then we’ll find a way to keep supporting that excitement. We want to be open as much as they want to come.”
And make no mistake, with seats going from $8.50-$13.50, it’s safe to say that limited-capacity screenings won’t exactly pay the rent—it’ll take continued community support through donations and membership to do that.
These screenings, however, do represent the theater’s good faith effort to reconnect with supporters and see how the community responds. Most importantly, they are a chance for folks who’ve missed the in-real-life movie watching experience to feel human again.
For DeFord that means actually being immersed in a film without being distracted by the hum of the chores in your washer and dryer, a burning desire to check that phone notification, or the sound of your dog telling you it needs to take a piss. Even you probably shouldn’t relieve yourself while watching the kind of movies Tampa Theatre is showing.
“These aren’t blockbusters where you can come in three minutes late and not miss anything or go to the bathroom in the middle of the movie,” DeFord said. He misses seeing a film in a building built for audiences that gazed at silent movies soundtracked by an orchestra and organ. Even the Tampa Theatre Wurlitzer will be helmed by acclaimed organist and longtime friend of the theater, Dr. Steven Ball on March 11. “There’s just an energy when you get enough people in the same room. The whole room is built to focus you in on the screen and the stage and focus the sound right onto your ears—to amplify the experience of being around all of these other people having the same experience as you.”
DeFord, said interest in the reopening has been high, with lots of encouragement from fans of theater, knows there are others who just can’t see themselves being in the seats just yet.
And that’s fine.
“There will be some people who aren’t comfortable yet, and, honestly, don’t feel obligated, don’t feel guilty, and don’t come if you feel like it’s beyond your personal risk threshold,” DeFord said. “If this is too much for you right now, we get it, and we’ll be here when you’re ready.”
Even with increased vaccinations, the future going forward looks different. We might be wearing masks for at least another year. But health officials have said that official Super Bowl events were not the massive superspreaders many feared they might be (contact tracing, or the lack of it, plus unofficial events, be damned).
It’s hard to think of anyone who doesn’t see the experiment happening at Tampa Theatre this weekend as a good indicator of things to come.
Let’s just hope the sniff test goes well.
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