By Chris Brown

Like you've never seen it before

Go behind the scenes at the Esplanade

Apr 16, 2020 | 5:04 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB – Even though the building is closed to the public due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Esplanade is still letting people inside … virtually.

On Tuesday a video posted to its Facebook page offered a peek inside the Esplanade as theatre technician Phil Stark took viewers backstage for a look at the system that moves props, set pieces, curtains and sometimes even people on stage.

“We’re public services and it’s difficult to engage our public at the moment with these facility closures, so just trying to give people a sense of something that they wouldn’t normally see,” said Aaron Nelson, manager of community connection and support with the City of Medicine Hat. “The complexity of this building is pretty immense and it’s great to give people a bit of an insight into that.”

Stark takes viewers nearly 80 feet above the stage showing off the system. The video offers a look at the fly lines, the process of loading the counter balances with weight, the head blocks that hold the weight put on the system and more.

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The Esplanade will post a new Behind the Scenes video each Tuesday.

Nelson says future episodes will include the museum and the archives as well as more theatre stuff and an artist video tour.

“We had an artist scheduled to do an exhibition during this time of closure who’s unable to do that so they’re going to present a studio tour of their own studio,” he explained. “So again you get see work in the gallery but you never get to see the behind the scenes of an artists’ studio.”

In addition, the annual School Art exhibition in the gallery will take on a different format this year, says Nelson.

With schooling now happening in homes instead of schools “people are submitting all sorts of images that they’ve done and we’re going to try to get as many of those up into an online gallery piece in May.”

As for operations at the Esplanade in general, Nelson said officials are constantly re-evaluating programming for now and in the future.