[SML] Lost tours...

[June Abernathy]

> On Jun 8, 2022, at 7:02 AM, Dale Farmer wrote:
> 
> Happy june everyone,
> 
>   During a breakroom conversation today, on how covid shutdowns 
> screwed up everyone's life, someone mentioned being on a tour that got 
> shut down by covid, and how they loaded everything out from the last 
> venue, found a place to park all the trailers, and sent everyone home.
>   Okay.  While stuck in traffic heading home, the thought came 
> floating up to my forebrain.  I wonder if there are any tour trailers 
> full of gear still sitting out there someplace.   If the touring company 
> shut down, laid everyone off and went defunct, does anyone even know 
> where the trailers are and who owns all the gear?
> 
>   Food for thought.
> 
> Dale

Very few tours left their gear in the trailers once they realized that the shutdown was going to last for more than a couple of weeks. Most tours that anticipated resuming after the shutdown either left their gear in the theater where they had been performing, or moved it to warehouses. Some loaded them in trucks for a few weeks, but then moved them to warehouse storage once it became clear that the down time was going to be protracted. 

If a Producer decided that they were not going to reopen that production, then they would have disposed of their package once they could assemble a crew. Most of the lighting and sound gear would have been returned to rental houses. Costumes would have been cleaned and returned to either rental houses or storage. Anything not leased or rented would have been moved to warehouse storage, donated, or disposed of. 

Some companies may have used trucks for storage, but that would be unusual, since truck trailers are usually rented, and paying to use them for long term storage would not be very efficient. In any case, those trailers would be in a known secure yard, and their contents would still belong to the Producers. 

While the individual LLCs set up to be the business entity responsible for a given tour may have been dissolved for tours that closed, the General Management Companies and Producers who hire them largely stayed in business, and still control their assets. I don’t know if any Tour Producers who went out of business over the pandemic, but any companies who didn’t stay afloat over the pandemic would have sold what they could, or had their assets (such as stored show gear) pass to creditors or be auctioned off or disposed of. 

Hope this helps -

June Abernathy

IATSE Steward/FOH Electrician
The Lion King National Tour