Dr. Mike Lopinto, creative director of FestivalSouth, was ready to send the festival’s brochure and calendar of events to the printer when the COVID-19 pandemic struck Forrest County in mid-March.
The festival – Mississippi’s only multi-week, multi-genre celebration of the arts – was scheduled to kick off on June 4 with a production of “Kinky Boots,” a popular Broadway musical, and Lopinto was excited for another successful year. He’d spent months organizing the festival alongside his colleagues from the Hattiesburg Concert Association, which oversees the yearly event.
Lopinto watched the news carefully as the first cases of the virus were diagnosed in Mississippi, and he watched the case count rise with each passing day. He also watched as venues closed their doors, many with no return date in sight, and he hit the pause button on sending the items to the printer. It was becoming clear there’d be no FestivalSouth, at least in its original form, in 2020.
“We had to cancel everything,” said Lopinto. “The first blow was when we lost facilities … and then we lost the ability for people to gather and do anything. We weren’t able to rehearse, and then we weren’t able to have an audience.”
Concert association officials decided to move this year’s festival programming to 2021.
“To save us some work, we asked everyone performing to slide to 2021, and most were able to do that,” said Lopinto. “I quickly made up a schedule and branding for 2021, and we just said we’re going to take the year off and go to next year.”
However, the itch to perform – and the need to support the association’s performers – prompted the association to launch a month-long fundraising initiative in May and also plan FestivalSouth Reimagined, a virtual version of the event scheduled for the month of June.
Lopinto said many performers who work for the concert association are facing the reality of no income due to canceled events.
“For them, it’s a huge hit financially but also psychologically,” he said. “You throw your life into performing, and it’s tied up into who you are. Things aren’t reopening for them, and we don’t know what the future is going to hold, either.”
The concert association immediately planned a fundraiser for student musicians, and it was very successful, said Lopinto.
“Many of our student musicians are international, and their main source of income was performing,” he said. “They can’t go out and get a regular job because they’re international students, and thankfully, we’ve had some generous people step up and help them with necessities like housing and food.”
The association also launched the COVID-19 Cultural Arts Emergency Relief Fund to assist in funding its operations and in supporting local performers. In addition to FestivalSouth, the association is also the parent organization of the Meistersingers Civic Chorus.
“The concert association probably hires more artists and musicians throughout the year than any other local group,” said Lopinto. “We have the Hub City Players, the Meistersingers, student musicians from the universities, regional and national performers … and we sustain that through ticket sales, generous grants and scholarships. However, with the COVID-19 cancellations, we’re left in the lurch for regular income. Being able to operate, to pay our small staff and do online events, became a challenge.”
To help recoup an estimated loss of $500,000 due to the pandemic, the association planned four initiatives for its month-long fundraiser. Couch to 5Play, a “name the composer” listening game, was one of the events, along with FestivalSouth Jeopardy, a trivia game. A raffle is also being held this week, and donors can contribute funds and be entered to win 50 percent of the donated money. The raffle ends Friday.
Another initiative, the “Singing Quarangrams,” proved to be “successful beyond our wildest expectations,” said Lopinto. A donor could purchase the live singing telegram to be performed by phone by one of the Meistersingers, and the telegrams were offered from May 4-10.
“The ‘Quarangrams’ were so successful that we’re going to bring them back in July,” said Lopinto. “You can do happy birthday messages, patriotic messages. As beneficial as it was, the people who got to do it … they were able to use their talent and sing. They were able to perform to someone they didn’t know, and the singers got a lot out of it.”
The association plans to launch FestivalSouth Reimagined on June 4, and there will be events at 7:30 p.m. every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday throughout June. The events will be streamed on the FestivalSouth Facebook page, and some of the performances will be live. Others will be pre-recorded, said Lopinto.
“I will host them, and we’ll have different guests coming in, including some celebrities who’ve performed at FestivalSouth in years past, like Sandi Patty,” he added. “We’ll have guests like Mayor Toby Barker, (VisitHATTIESBURG Executive Director) Marlo (Dorsey), Hattiesburg City Council members and local performers.”
Additionally, on Mondays at noon, the festival will host “Movement Monday” with live dance performers streamed on the Facebook page.
“The dancers will try to get us up and moving on our lunch breaks,” said Lopinto.
The FestivalSouth performances will be done like public television telethons, he added.
“We’ll use them to continue raising funds to help us keep going,” he said.
Overall, the association’s fundraising efforts have been pretty successful, according to Lopinto, and the association is “in a good position.”
“However, it’s still a dire position, but we’re optimistic people will take these opportunities and help us,” he said. “It’s not all about making money or selling tickets, but it’s about performing … and it’s about preserving our ability to continue the high-quality programming the community has come to know and love.”
