Cleveland's Agora Theatre Remains Optimistic For 2021 Return to Live Performances

Venues in Cleveland are hoping to return to live performances this year, including the historic Agora Theatre and Ballroom, Crain's Cleveland Business reports.

Agora general manager Ryan Neuhaus said that the venue planned 135 events for 2020, and would have been on track for 150 this year, if it weren't for the pandemic.

"We had some events in the first two-and-a-half months of 2020, but when COVID-19 started we initially thought this was something that would only last a couple of months, and we could resume business as usual," Neuhaus said. "As we all know, that was not the case. We lost roughly 120 events in 2020. It was something that no one could have foreseen."

Neuhaus is hoping that this year, things can return to normal.

"Now we are just hoping the vaccination process combined with safe practices can get us back to having full capacity events in our venues again and praying for a green-lit Q4 to let us make up some lost ground," he said.

Smaller performances will be the first to come back, with larger, nationwide tours coming much later, due to differences in guidelines from state to state.

"Without a unified national response to the pandemic, though, each state is opening at various rates, with differing restrictions, which causes a headache for artist camps routing a full-scale tour," said AEG regional marketing director Nick Trentacost.

AEG plans to only reopen its businesses back up at full capacity.

"With limited-capacity events being allowed to take place in various cities, we are cautiously optimistic, but the one thing we learned on the way down feels like it's the same on the way back up again: Nothing is constant and nobody can make any calls with any certainty about a timeline," Trentacost said.

Read more on Crain's Cleveland Business.