Now what?

It’s easy to watch Netflix, Hulu, and Prime, and they’ll be around long after the pandemic ends, but the arts and artists in your community are in peril. Do what you can. Please.

One, then another, then all of it, like dominoes. Within two weeks every performance venue, theater, sports arena, stadium, and nightclub went dark. No more sports, movies, live music, theater, comedy clubs, opera — any of it. Gone in a flash, along with millions of jobs and countless dollars. I don’t know what to make of it — the scale of what’s happening is hard to fathom, and frankly, it’s too depressing to contemplate for more than a few minutes at a time, but then my livelihood doesn’t depend on that (although it too, was a casualty of the pandemic as of March 23rd).

Some arts organizations are getting over the shell shock with impressive speed and dexterity by streaming performances online and opening up their archives to generate revenue and donations. Others are performing from their homes and sharing it online. Magic shows and yoga classes are taking place on Zoom and Facebook. I admire all these efforts, and if there’s any upside to this catastrophe it’s that people can now see and experience a lot of things they couldn’t before because of money, geography, schedules, or a million other limitations.

Most people have probably never heard of Staunton, Virginia - I never had until last summer, when my wife and I drove into it looking to entertain our kids for a day and discovered a bustling little town at the tail end of its annual summer music festival. We also discovered its best-kept secret, the American Shakespeare Center (ASC), housed in the world’s only recreation of Shakespeare’s Blackfriar’s Theater. It’s a marvelous space, and the company does exciting, thoughtful, and smart theater. But it depends on ticket sales, which went poof overnight.

ASC figured out a way to release four productions from their 2020 Actors’ Renaissance Season and three productions from their national tour for streaming through a ticketed system on the company’s website. The videos, all seven of which were filmed in cinema-quality, will be distributed via a secure link with the first four films from the Actors’ Renaissance Season premiering online throughout this week. Buying a ticket might help them stay afloat. If not enough people buy one it will probably sink the company, and they’ll have plenty of company. But here’s the one good part about this: you can now see the work of this impressive company in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley from anywhere in the world, and hopefully theater lovers far and wide can check them out and provide some support. ASC is just one example - many others are trying similar undertakings because — let’s be blunt— their survival depends on it.

In San Francisco, Theatre Bay Area has a newsletter and a page on their website called Retaking the Stage listing all the Bay Area theater performances available online, streaming and recorded. Stanford Live has moved what it can of what’s left of its 2020 season entirely online, noting “the show must go online.”

Even the media companies representing artists are helping out, as they should. 21C Media has reconfigured The Mix, its newsletter letting people like me know what’s going on with its artist roster to a streaming presentation of what its artists are up to. Check it out.

Goldstar, the nationwide discount ticket website, is giving refunds as well as an extra 10% which can be used for future performances. Even better, you can make donations to your favorite local performing organizations through the site.

There are hundreds of these initiatives and endeavors getting underway each day. If you care about the arts, and the artists, performers, behind-the-scenes people, and venue personnel who make them happen, please seek out opportunities to support them however you can.