The show must go on: Crestline’s Central Alabama Theater continues virtually during COVID-19 pandemic

Central Alabama Theater, based in Crestline Village at the iconic Steeple Arts Academy of Dance, is marking its sixth anniversary in 2020, certainly a cause for celebration.

“As you well know in Theater, when you can start from the ground up and still be here six years later, that is an accomplishment in itself,” said Carl Peoples, the theater’s executive artistic director.

CAT had to cancel some live events this spring — two booked shows and five weekly cabarets — due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“When it first happened, we were devastated like everybody else and sulked in the corner for a couple of weeks,” Peoples said. “Then we realized we can cry about it or turn our creativity on its ear.”

Peoples began hosting a weekly series of old CAT video clips called “CAT Close-Ups.”

The episodes gave people an escape from the pandemic and “something you didn’t have to think about, something that made you smile,” he said.

Then the theater celebrated its anniversary in a grand style with the “CAT Cyber Cabaret,” presented virtually via Facebook Live in late May.

The event was a mix of Alabama and national acts, some of whom Peoples met during his years working in show business in New York and Los Angeles.

The 90-minute show included winners of Grammy, Golden Globe and Emmy awards, as well as “American Idol” runner-up and Birmingham native Diana DeGarmo.

“We had people from every spectrum of the entertainment world,” Peoples said.

“CAT Cyber Cabaret” helped the Theater generate positive attention and reach out to its audience while its venue was closed. The show’s success also showed the CAT board a way to continue reaching that audience in the coming months made uncertain by the continuing pandemic.

In August, CAT will present the first installment in a monthly series of online shows,“CAT Cyber Cabaret the Series,” with Peoples as the host. The shows will be free of charge and available on Facebook Live among other social media outlets.

People can donate if they want to, Peoples said. “The cool thing is that we divide the donations with the artists because they are also not working right now,” he said.

CAT Cabaret will be similar to other talk shows, Peoples said. “There will be opening monologues, and then we will have a JAB [Junior Artistic Board] member open the show, and then we have a special guest,” he said. “They come in, and we do a 10-15 minute interview, and they do five or six songs.”

The Theater’s original plan was to host the May 26 event in 2021 for its seventh anniversary, because seven “is a more magical number,” he said. ”But the pandemic hit, and we were forced to rethink some things.”

Rather than flying in People’s entertainment friends from around the country, CAT could do something online, so the event got moved up a year.

“We think it’s the universe’s way of making things happen as it is supposed to, so we try to go with the flow,” he said.

The show featured well-known performers such as Reeve Carney, Ty Herndon and Ace Young, as well as Miss Alabama Tiara Pennington and others.

The CAT Cabaret will be presented monthly at least through the end of the year, Peoples said.

“It will probably be 2021 before we are doing anything live again,” Peoples said, citing the Theater’s desire to keep people safe during COVID-19.

“People are not going to buy tickets to sit next to people they don't know,” he said.

In addition, CAT does not rely on volunteers to stage its shows. “We never ask people to work without being paid, so it's even harder for us to mount something during a time like this,” Peoples said. “Nobody is giving out grants and nobody is sponsoring anything and nobody is buying tickets.”

“We will do whatever we can to stay relevant and give our patrons and our audience something to watch,” Peoples said.

The Theater board also hopes to present a holiday show, even if it has to be done virtually. “The holidays are a big time for us,” Peoples said.

In 2018, CAT presented “A Not So Silent Night” in the Sirote Theater at The Alys Stephens Center at UAB.

By spring of 2021, Peoples hopes to present the family-friendly play “Daddy Longlegs,”one of the shows the theater had to cancel this spring.

The musical director will be Broadway conductor Abdul Hamid Royal, known for hit shows such as “Five Guys Named Moe” and “The Gospel at Colonus.” Royal performed at CAT early this spring in the last live cabaret before the venue closed.

“It will feel good when we do get back to the Theater,” Peoples said.

CAT began offering shows in 2014 at The Clubhouse on Highland. In 2016, the company moved to Crestline in 2016 at the invitation of Deanny Hardy, who runs the Steeple Arts Academy of Dance.

The Academy was run by her mother and grandmother before her, and she told Village Living in 2016 that she was happy to welcome CAT.

“Years ago, my mom had a vision of this being a center for the arts, not just dance,” Hardy said. “We think it’s great for the community. It makes the arts accessible for everyone.”

Inspired by the church-style architecture of Steeple Arts, CAT presented “Smoke on the Mountain” — the story of a gospel singer at a Baptist church in the Smoky Mountains in 1938— as its first show in its new home.

Mountain Brook has been “a perfect setup” for the Theater, Peoples said. “You can park at Steeple Arts and go have dinner and come back to the show. “It's easy, accessible.”

Mountain Brook is also “very centrally located to all of Birmingham and Jefferson County,” he said.

A Gardendale native, Peoples moved back to Birmingham in about 2012 to be closer to his parents.

People spent about 14 years in Los Angeles working in TV and enjoyed it, but the industry “turned into reality TV,” he said.

“When you're in the Theater, it's about storytelling, and TV can be about faster and cheaper,” he said.

At CAT, Peoples said he and the board want “to bring quality stuff and spark conversation.”

“We want to bring experiences to the community that they can’t find anywhere,” he said. “We want to do things that are appropriate for our audiences but different and fresh.”

“Unique and clever are our two favorite words,” said Peoples, who notes that CAT also likes to present Alabama premieres.

CAT seeks to get young people involved in the Theater with its Junior Advisory Board. Each year the Theater picks 12 applicants, from rising high-school juniors through age 26, and gives them the opportunity to gain real-world experience while shadowing theater professionals, including dressers, stage managers, music directors and lighting and sound technicians.

For more information, including dates for CAT Cabaret the Series, go to centralalabamatheater.org.