CMU School of Drama


Thursday, March 18, 2021

Bay Area Artists on Challenges, Unexpected Victories in the Pandemic

KQED: A year ago, on the verge of shelter in place, country singer/songwriter Rosanne Cash offered an encouraging reminder to the world’s artists, writers, musicians and other creatives: that “when Shakespeare was quarantined because of the plague, he wrote King Lear.”

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I really liked this article because it offered so many different perspectives on how artists have been faring during the pandemic. There is a really wide variety amongst artists about how the pandemic has gone for them and where they are now compared to one year ago. For some people I know they feel the past year has been one of immense personal growth, and that they have become better people throughout this whole experience. On the other hand, I know some people that feel this has been a year only of tragedy and challenge and that they have lost a year of their life. For most people it is somewhere between the two, with some days being okay and some being very bad. I totally agree with Tanya Rey when they talked about how the feeling of collective mourning has impacted them and their work. It feels helpful to read an article and know other artists are feeling similar to you, so I was glad to have read this article.

Jin Oh said...

I think it is definitely necessary for the artists to look at the quarantine on the bright side. I know there are a lot of realistic problems, such as unemployment, but there are actually advantages that people could get from the quarantined life style if they take a step back. Although being stuck at home does not sound like a very pleasing experience, I think it did open the way for new source of inspiration from a lot of artists, rather than making them lose the inspiration. I hope that more people could use this chance to stack up the new ideas that they probably could not have gotten when they were working outside all the time, and expose such ideas after the pandemic incident is over. I think it would gather people’s empathetic reaction more easily as we all know that literally everyone has experienced the same, or at least similar life style.