Theaters hit the one-year anniversary of shutdown. How are artists keeping afloat?
Every sector of art has been touched in some way by the COVID-19 pandemic. How are artists coping? According to director Daniel Fish, "It’s this constant state of postponement and uncertainty." Fish is creating a song cycle video production for UCLA's Center for the Art of Performance alongside composer Ted Hearne and visual artist Rachel Perry.
"No sector of the performing arts has been unscathed by the COVID-19 pandemic. But I’ve been especially concerned about the plight of theater stalwarts, those pioneers and purists who haven’t been biding their time in rehearsal rooms, waiting for their Netflix closeups. For directors, playwrights and performance artists whose canvas is the three-dimensional stage, the situation has been unimaginably dire.
How have they been getting by, creatively and financially? I feared tales of Dickensian hardship, but I came away from my conversations with director Daniel Fish, the performance troupe Culture Clash, playwright and performer Dael Orlandersmith, director and visual artist Lars Jan, director Annie Dorsen and playwright and director Richard Maxwell heartened by their tenacity and resiliency.
These theater makers are well-versed in the art of survival. This has been a gut-wrenching time for them, but they’ve risen to the challenge with the same ingenuity and courage they’ve shown in their pathbreaking work."— Charles McNulty, Mar. 2 2021
This post is an excerpt. Read the full article on the Los Angeles Times website.
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