Items

• 
  2021-10-09

  The Challenges of Performing Arts During the Pandemic

  This is a short audio file that talks about what challenges I faced during the pandemic, including a performing arts that was shut down the day before opening night and then a successful fundraiser that raised $25,000.
• 
  2020-03-13

  The Fight for a Show

  When the global pandemic hit, we were just a day away from putting on a theater production that we had worked on for a year and over 10 weeks of rehearsal. As a board, we thought of every possible way to keep a show, so that it wasn't shut down. I went and measured the venue, the local Veterans Hall to see how many seats we could have in the hall, if they were six-feet apart. We looked at requiring mask or limiting to just family. We met with local public health officials with different options on how to keep our show. But, the final decision was that it was in our best interest to cancel the show. The concern was that with family coming in from other areas, that Best of Broadway could be responsible for bringing Covid-19 to Susanville, and we were not willing to take that risk. When we cancelled, we figured we just needed to reschedule the show a couple of weeks. That, in and of itself was challenging. But the idea of a possible lawsuit or worse causing harm to others was a real possibility. As the Board President, I had to announce via Facebook and Instagram that the show was cancelled. It was terrible. A very sad day for our Broadway family. This post was from one of the husbands of our performers. His words of encouragement was reassuring. Most people responded in a sympathetic and understanding way.
• 
  2020-03-23

  Introverts vs. Extroverts during Lock Down-A meme

  I am an extrovert. I get my energy from people. I love people. I surround myself with a lot of people. The three months leading up to the pandemic lock down I had been surrounded almost every day by almost 200 of my closest friends, people I call my family because we worked together on a theater production called Susanville Best of Broadway. When the pandemic hit, the show was cancelled and then even my work sent everyone home. I was home with my kids. And it was very quiet. We are a very active family involved in many local community projects. I have meetings every week and they have sports. All of sudden, we were home. And if I saw someone I knew while out in public (the grocery store) it was weird. I didn't know if I could hug them (I didn't) and would just awkwardly wave from a distance. It was terrible. In fact, my girls struggled and would still have friends over. I made them limit it to just one friend, but even then, we struggled. This meme really got to me. I remember hearing friends say how their life didn't change at all because they were already homebodies. The idea of being home was actually very stressful. I ended up working at my work, because being home all day to work was not very much fun. I learned a lot about myself during that time. Most importantly, I need people in my life.
• 
  2020-03-18

  The Show that Almost Was

  After Susanville's Best of Broadway show was cancelled just a day before its opening night, Susanville's local online news editor Jeremy Couso reached out to the Best of Board members to see if he could publish an article about our show, the show that never happened. He and his wife attends the performance for a media night and he happened to have a video of the show. For a small production, the youtube video of the performance has had just under 900 views as of October 9th, 2021. I directed Wizard of Oz with a dear friend of mine, in a one year shot to direct. Watching the video of the show that didn't happen is honestly very sad and hard to do. We become family with the cast and to not reach the finale is painful. But the show must go on, and in 2022, Best of Broadway will take the stage again.
• 
  2020-10-20

  A Public Performance in the Middle of the Pandemic

  For the last few years, I have coordinated an event called, Dancing for a Brand New Me. It is a fundraiser event that is designed to not only bring about awareness to domestic violence in Lassen County, but it is a fundraiser to help pay for the the mortgage of the shelter for victims. Last year was the 7th year that local "Susanville Stars" were partnered with local professional choreographers to dance three dances before judges similar to NBC's Dancing with the Stars. Our local stars are usually very active community members who spend about 5-6 months learning the dances, but they also fundraiser to get sponsors. It becomes a fun, healthy competition to see who can out dance and out raise funds with each other. Most of the choreographers have participated in the event for many years. It has become a community favorite, selling out tickets both nights the third weekend in October. In 2020, we had to come up with four different plans on how we would perform, because of the pandemic. Our plans included only performing a livestreamed show to relocating our event outdoors. Normally, the event is performed in the local Veterans Hall that is equipped with stage, lights, and sound. In September 2020, I wrote a proposal to public health outlining in detail how we would manage the event. It took weeks for public health to get back to us. But what they approved was that our event could be held at the local High School football stadium, we had to mark off 6-foot distance, require mask, and have screenings at the gate. We had hand sanitizer stations and we were instructed two things: limited seats (200 people) and whatever we did, when we live streamed to not show the audience. The article that I attached talks more about the event than the obstacle it took to put on the event. It is incredibly difficult to move sound equipment in and out of a football stadium every day for a week. It is hard to do a staged performance when you are surrounded by a dirt track. It is hard to have your dressing room be the football locker room. It was very difficult to make all of the modifications and changes that we did. But we did it. And it was an amazing event. Even though we weren't supposed to, we have about 400 people in the audience each night. Most did not wear mask and most were sitting very close to each other. Even one of the public health officials sat in the audience not following the "rules". The event raised over $25,000! Just two weeks after our event, many of the Halloweeen events led to a Covid-19 outbreak in our community and the cases rose rapidly. Prior to Dancing for a Brand New Me 2020, we had zero cases. After Halloween 2020 our cases skyrocketed for a small town. I saw that we happened to just squeeze in one performing arts event just in time before things got bad. I feel like we were lucky and it was probably why the event was so well attended. I have the newspaper article and my proposal attached.
• 
  2020-03-17

  Performance Cancelled a Day Before Opening Night

  I am the board president for a local theater company, in a small town in Northeast California. For over 20 years, the production Susanville's Best of Broadway has produced a yearly concert series that features snippets from several different Broadway shows. Our production is 100% volunteer and is run by a production manager and a production team. Our cast runs over 100 people every year and includes community members of all ages. Our 2020 production was an epic year for us, as we had spent a lot f money on props, backdrops, and costumes. Several of the shows included Hamilton, Waitress, and my personal favorite Wizard of Oz (to name a few). Our production team started in April of 2019 to plan and the cast started to rehearse in January 2020. The cast would show up to rehearsals 6 days a week for 10 weeks. Two days after the pandemic was announced nationally, was supposed to be Susanville's Best of Broadway Opening Night. We schedule a total of 7 shows over two weekend. The day before opening night, our local public health team reached out to me. In a stressful meeting with the public health team and the Broadway board of directors, it was determined that we had to cancel our show. We attempted to do whatever we could to modify and change things, including social distancing, but pubic health was worried that if someone got sick from our show, we would end up with some sort of lawsuit we couldn't handle. They did, however, allow for us to present to anyone who had been at rehearsal, which included some family members and we called it a rehearsal. It was a sad night. Performing to an empty hall was sad. The cast cleaned up their belongings with hope that we would reopen in a couple of weeks. Not only were we unable to open the show, but we were unable to perform a concern series in 2021. Thankfully, plans are underway to have a performance in 2022.
• 
  2021-01-11

  Concerts, performances could return in the fall ‘if everything goes right,’ Fauci says

  Dr. Anthony Fauci offered hope that concerts and theater performances could return in 2021. Speaking at a conference for the Association of Performing Arts Professionals, the nation’s top infectious disease expert was asked when indoor venues will be able to reopen their doors for the public. The performing arts industry has largely been shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic. Fauci said it’s important for the country to reach herd immunity of 70 to 85% of the population vaccinated from the coronavirus.
• 
  2021-01-15

  Virtual theater

  This is an article showing what virtual plays you can watch and when/where. I find this article important because live theater is no longer a possibility in the pandemic so we must find solutions. This article explains that there are places you can watch recorded plays from the past and the contributions will be going straight to the performing arts which are financially struggling since March. This is a very helpful article for those who want to watch broadway again while also helping the business. Broadway will be back one day but until then there has to be adjustments made and this will help them get ahead start financially when they open back up.
• 
  2020-11-15

  Symphony Reinvention: Orchestras, GR Ballet cope with COVID upheaval, revamp for survival

  With concert halls unable to open due to COVID-19, many performing arts groups have to find alternate ways to perform and raise money.
• 
  2020-11-01

  Cancelled due to Covid: the project mapping the abandoned arts events of 2020

  COVID-19 has caused many performing art shows to be closed around the world. Artist Anna Tregloan made a branch of her already established Impossible Project to track what shows by Australian artists that have been cancelled or postponed.
• 
  2020-10-28

  Crew Members Fighting to Save their Jobs

  This is an article about the difficulty that crew members on shows and other entertainment industry venues are facing regarding the pandemic.
• 
  2020-08-19

  Russian Ballet Returned to the Stage. Then a Covid Outbreak Hit.

  This article discusses the Mariinsky Ballet, one of Russia's premier ballet companies. As Europe is a bit ahead of the United States in reopening their performing arts, they began performing in July, in the middle of the COVID pandemic, only to have to close three weeks later when the virus spread throughout the ballet corps. Since then, the Mariinsky Ballet has been criticized for returning to the stage too early, despite the precautions they made against the virus. This incident has caused several other ballet companies across Europe to rethink their own return to the stage. In spite of these issues, many dancers are also wanting to return to the stage.
• 
  2020-09-07

  I Am an Arts Worker

  I found this post on Ali Ewoldt's public Instagram account. This post breaks down the importance of performing arts in the economy and explains the DAWN Act. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, performing arts venues have been closed down and unable to reopen, causing major financial losses to that business sector. The DAWN Act is one of several bills being considered by Congress to help the performing arts sector get back on its feet.
• 
  2020-09-01

  Why some theaters in Jacksonville lit up in red

  This news article from Jacksonville, Florida, talks about Red Alert Restart. Over the course of the pandemic, performing arts and venues for performing arts have suffered economically. RESTART (Reviving the Economy Sustainably Towards A Recovery in Twenty-twenty) is currently a bill in Congress waiting approval. To raise awareness of their financial problems, theaters across the country on September 1, 2020, lit their exteriors in red to represent their financial losses due to the pandemic. Many of the participating theaters in Jacksonville are places I have seen concerts at or are places I have driven by many times.
• 
  2020-04-03

  With exhibition and performance spaces shuttered, artists are relying on the generosity of patrons.

  "caring for those sick with Covid-19 and preventing others from becoming so remains the priority in New York City, as in the rest of the country. But how can we look out for others particularly affected by the crisis? Citywide closures of nonessential services have devastated the arts at every level: Exhibition and performance spaces have shuttered indefinitely, and thousands of New Yorkers working in creative industries, many of them freelancers, have seen their livelihoods disappear with no assurances about when they’ll be able to work again." Artists are struggling and this article demonstrates some things that can be done to help.
• 
  2020-06-05

  Opening Hollywood

  On Friday the governor explained how Hollywood will reopen after months of lockdown due to the novel coronavirus pandemic.
• 
  2020-06-04

  Harry Potter camp goes online

  Since January, I planned to send my 6yo to a summer theater camp. When I moved to Tempe, several people told me that Childsplay was great, and I couldn’t wait to send her. The camp was supposed to start in June, and then thanks to COVID-19 got pushed back to July. I re-arranged some summer plans to make sure she could go, only to have the in-person camp cancelled. Instead, they offered an online version called the “Triwizard Tournament.” I can say that she tried, but after months of being at home she felt weird getting online and seeing a Zoom screen full of three new teachers and new kids. When asked to say her “wizard name,” she clammed up, said her stomach hurt and said she didn’t want to continue. I was frustrated, but I said OK, logged her off, and took a breather. I think, what frustrated me the most is I want her to have a fun activity, one that doesn’t require my input. Honestly, it would be a relief if she were having fun pretending to be a wizard on Zoom instead of bored and complaining that she wants more TV time. After thinking it through, and realizing I was more upset over what I wanted, I got it together and we moved on. I hope she can do a traditional class in the future.
• 2020-05-29

  Extra legroom and no interval: Germany plans for post-lockdown theatre

  “As Germany continues to relax social distancing restrictions imposed to curb the spread of Covid-19, playhouses in most cities are still waiting for an official date when they can reopen their doors to the public. The Berlin senate announced on Friday that open-air cultural events will be allowed from 2 June, but theatres are likely to remain shut until September. Venues such as the German capital’s Berliner Ensemble, however, are already providing a glimpse of what drama could look like in a world of social distancing.”
• 
  2020-05-29

  COVID-19 rules prompt Utah theater group to perform Shakespeare in the parking garage

  "The interactive theater production “Through Yonder Window,” based on “Romeo and Juliet,” produced by the experimental Salt Lake City group SONDERimmersive. Using COVID-19 safety precautions • Audience members must stay in their cars, with windows open a bit, throughout the performance. No restrooms are available. Performers will wear face masks, and stay at least 6 feet apart at all times. Cars will likely come into contact with performers, materials, soap and water." This is how artist are attempting to further their craft and stay alive during a devastating time for their trade.
• 
  03/16/2020

  Covid-19 Update: Broadway Cancels Shows

  This explains Broadway's decision to cancel or postpone shows throughout April 12 due to the Covid-19 global crisis.