The Oxbow Music Festival in Morrisville received $4,865. 

Crothers Entertainment & Production in Burlington, which runs Higher Ground Music, was awarded $2.2 million. 

They are among the 59 Vermont performing arts organizations that have shared more than $18 million under the federal Shuttered Venue Operators Grants program. 

The recipients include a museum and movie theaters that struggled to survive even though they shut their doors for months or weeks during the pandemic.

Performing arts venues were among the first operations to be shut down when the pandemic arrived in March 2020 and are among the last to reopen. 

The grants proved essential to the survival of some organizations.

“No magical genies came out of jars,” James O’Hanlon, owner of the Savoy Theater in Montpelier, said in a telephone interview. “If we did not get that grant, there is no way I would be here.”

O’Hanlon gives credit to U.S Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., an author of the Save Our Stages Act, the legislation that created the grants.

As chairman of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., helped move the legislation through to passage and made sure the funds were available.

“What began as the ‘Save Our Stages’ movement over a year ago has now materialized into meaningful relief for the venues we know and love,” Welch, Leahy and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said in a joint statement. “Our independent live music and entertainment venues not only bring joy and energy to our downtowns and communities, they are economic engines that help make Vermont such a special place to live and visit.”

The Savoy Theater was awarded $106,063. O’Hanlon received the money last month. He says he’s already spent about $20,000. 

“That money is going to be gone before the year is out,” O’Hanlon said. 

He said some of the money will go for rent, and the rest will go into payroll. He added that, by the time the grant money runs out, he will know whether ticket sales and concessions will allow him to stay in business. 

He gives credit to his landlords for the theater’s survival. He says one of them told him to pay the rent when he had the money. He negotiated a reduced rent with them based on the reduced capacity the theater had to operate at. 

“They want the theater to be here,” O’Hanlon said.

Montpelier’s Lost Nation Theater received its grant of $73,013 on Tuesday, said Dona Bate, the organization’s accounts manager.

The company relies on season tickets sold at the end of one season to start the next season, Bate said. The biggest expense is getting a show ready to perform. With the pandemic, there were no advance sales for performances, youth camps, workshops and holiday programs. 

Bate said Lost Nation will spend 75 percent of the grant on personnel: cast, directors, set, costumes, sound and light designers, and crew. Another 15% will go to protecting workers and equipment from Covid-19 and for equipment for streaming productions. 

The theater company was shut out of its Montpelier City Hall venue March 18, 2020. It survived by streaming previous shows and from donations and contributions. 

“People send small donations, large donations,” Bate said. “It’s been inspiring to watch. We wouldn’t have lasted until this grant without the community support.”

Now, live productions are beginning again. Two directors put on an in-person camp for children in the City Hall theater last week. Another starts Monday with a blend of live and online coaching.

The grants were awarded according to a formula based on the organizations’ 2019 revenue, minus any Paycheck Protection Plan loans they took out, O’Hanlon said.

O’Hanlon reopened his theater in September and stayed open until Thanksgiving. 

 “Nobody was coming,” he said.

 “Why are we open?” he asked himself. 

The theater reopened after the holidays, and business has improved since. 

“People are coming back,” O’Hanlon said. “We’re showing films that people want to see.”

O’Hanlon said big distributors might only allow a two-week period when movies are exclusively in theaters. So he opts for smaller distributors and films that are not on Hulu or Amazon or Netflix — movies such as “The Green Knight,” “Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain” and “Pig.” 

The downside is that distributors for these films have smaller advertising budgets, so fewer people know about the films, he said. 

Still, the art-house theater survives, even as the pandemic still looms.

“By some miracle we’re still here,” O’Hanlon said. “We’re going to try to be here as long as we can.”