New York Theater: Matthew-Lee Erlbach first realized he would become an actor and a playwright when he saw “True West” on Broadway at age 14 – “It was like gods performing rituals to mortals,” he says. It took years before he understood “just how vulnerable those gods are.”
Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, “our businesses are being eviscerated, and our friends and family are being evicted from their apartments,” Erlbach says, “but we were being left out of meaningful economic relief and even out of the political conversation.”
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It is critical that the arts sector gets the economic support that it so desperately needs, but more importantly this article highlights the many ways in which government and society continues to treat the arts as a hobby and an inconsequential economic contributor. The arts industry itself is a $877 billion dollar industry that is getting very little attention from Congress. Despite the fact that our country has turned to the arts to support us through this pandemic (television and film streaming, music streaming, virtual tours of cultural spaces et cetera) artists are not being taken care of during this time. Furthermore, many of the businesses that are reliant on customers from the arts industry (ie hotels and restaurants near theaters) are struggling also, and the impact of a country with a barely functioning arts industry is clear. Artists are becoming activists to save the industry, but there still seems to be a long way to go before there is active support from Congress.
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