CMU School of Drama


Friday, April 17, 2020

Michael T. Strickland’s Statement on Production Companies Road to Recovery

ETNow.com: Bandit Lites chair and founder, Michael T. Strickland, has the following to say regarding the effect on COVID-19 on the live entertainment industry:

“I have been engaged since 14 March with senators Lamar Alexander and Marsha Blackburn, as well as others, on the crafting, alteration and details of the Families First Coronavirus Response Act and the CARES Act, focusing on the Payroll Protection Program. I have read and commented on every aspect of the two legislations all along the way. I have been working to assure that all people affected as we are in the live entertainment industry are taken care of.

2 comments:

Dean Thordarson said...

This article contained some interesting information which I had not heard until this point. One of the points which Michael Strickland covers in this is that the entertainment industry will likely be the last to reopen. It does make sense, seeing as live events will crowd many people into a small space, which is the easiest way to spread a virus. That being said, he also said that the live entertainment industry may only open four to twenty weeks after the rest of the world begins to reopen its doors. This is a massive time frame. For weeks is a whole month of waiting, but twenty weeks is almost half a year. If the live entertainment industry has to wait half a year to restart after the rest of the world has begun to restart, that will likely mean either winter this year or even into next year. I cannot even fathom to think about the length of time, as it truly just makes the situation seem so much more hopeless and dire. The bottom line, though, is that everything will reopen when it is safe to do so, and there is nothing that can be done about it.

Margaret Shumate said...

While it doesn't explicitly say so, there's a troubling undertone to this article that suggests that the time when it is medically okay to re-open businesses is when people decide that it is medically okay to re-open businesses. There's a defensable argument there, which is that based on the CDC data and expert testimony, a well informed public should collectively decide when they are willing to tolerate the risks and the collateral damage of going back to work. However, I'm not sure if that's what is being said here, and I dont think it really makes sense, even if it was. That factor should be folded into the "social" calculus, as the author has laid out. Medical facts should be left entirely to medical experts. When people "feel" that it is medically safe to open does not necessarily bare any resemblance at all to the point when it is actually medically safe to open. We must, in this crisis and in all others, relearn, as a society, to trust experts.