Jeremy O Harris | Opinion | The Guardian: Recently, I was in a taxi and the driver asked me what I did. When I told him I’m a playwright, he looked back at me with true pity. “I feel for you people. I’m real poor on money right now, like most cab drivers, but at least I can work … for hospitality and the arts it’s like the light just got turned off. It ain’t right.”
3 comments:
If anyone is looking for an optimistic article, this might not be quite it– but it definitely is truthful. It could be another year before things are really “back to normal” (or whatever our new normal becomes); this means another year of the arts being squandered by lack of ability to put on shows for a live audience. While experimental and new content via livestream and other forms of “Zoom theater” have helped keep theater going in some forms, there are few equivalents to seeing a show performed live in front of you on a stage. And, the opportunity for actors, designers, directors, everyone in theater really, to work with colleagues in person is unmatched. Even for us students studying theater, this is all a new experience for us; I truly miss spending hours of rehearsal time in a theater surrounded by people. I look forward to the day we can move forward from this pandemic, but in the meantime I hope we can find a way to (safely) ensure the arts are not decimated by COVID.
Just another sad example of the United States not taking this pandemic seriously on a federal level. Local and even state governments are hurting and will hurt due to the decreased tax revenue. The works project administration has always seemed to me like an excellent use of federal money. After all, what is the government here for anyway? To promote the general welfare! It’s also disappointing because other countries are doing more to protect their businesses who are in need. The author is referring to money, and I really hope that even if the industry doesn’t get the money it needs in the form of bailouts like the airlines, then the industry will bounce back on its own. Theater is full of people who are willing to put in the work for their art and that’s absolutely commendable. We’ve known for a long time that the average theater-goers age has been steadily increasing, so hopefully the pandemic is an excuse to reorganize and restructure to appeal to younger audiences and make it more affordable.
This was definitely not my favorite article to read while in school studying theatre, but it makes a lot of interesting points about how theatre is one of the most affected industries by the whole pandemic. It's a classic case of Americans being dumb and ruining good things for good people. I am interested to see what comes of theatre pricing after the pandemic is over, and that they might make it more accessible in order to fill more seats. Lowering prices in that instance might actually lead to them making more money, which would probably be good to get theatre back on it's feet. I don't think that the arts will ever die in the hands of a pandemic, because artist constantly starve to create, and will make it happen regardless of circumstances, but it is definitely sad to see the most classic version of the art form I love dying off almost completely for a year or two.
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