The big drama of The GALA Hispanic Theatre’s season opener “El Perro del Hortelano (The Dog in the Manger)” is that they’re presenting it at all.

It’s the first indoor theatrical production to open its doors since the pandemic plunged the once burgeoning D.C. theater scene into darkness nearly eight months ago. While there have been some Zoomed (and telephoned) attempts at theater in the meantime, the essential connection of live actors working in front of a live audience has been missing for most of the year.

GALA was named one of just six venues allowed to open in the district in an experimental basis, and the only theater. Under strict guidelines it calls for no more than 50 people in the building, all of them masked and socially distanced. Since that number also includes cast, crew and staff, that leaves just 25 people allowed in to see a performance, representing just 9 percent of its former capacity. 

In addition to increased cleaning and placement of hand sanitizer, the theater installed a new high efficiency air filtration system, circulating air six times every hour. The audience has to reserve tickets online and have a temperature check at the door.

And once inside? I was surprised to find that the usually clever sets at GALA, this one by Clifton Chadick, is entirely enclosed in plexiglass. We’re not watching Zoom for once, but we are still watching a box. Thanks to a tilt, and the lighting of Alberto Segarra, it’s not completely noticeable as, say, the plexiglass at your drugstore’s checkout station, though the actors, unmasked but using individual microphones, sometimes use the transparent wall as an intended plane to push against.