The Covid-19 pandemic started in March 2020 and, as of January 2021, there are hopeful signs that it will eventually end, but we are still many months away. And even after the pandemic is over, what will the world look like? Will corporate executives still want to pay for large office buildings when they know that their employees are capable of working from home? Will people want to travel to other cities, domestic or abroad? And how will the arts recover?
As of this writing, the museums in have just reopened after being closed for December and January. Will theaters reopen in 2021? And if they do, what will be going to a show be like? We used to be among crowds all the time and take it for granted and now, every time a crowd is possible, people must be innovative. The arts, and especially performing arts, have suffered greatly during this pandemic. Travel has been restricted and so even open museums aren’t getting the visitors they typically do. How do we recover? How do we adapt? As Susie Medak of the Berkeley Repertory Theatre in California said,
“Managing during this time is like driving on black ice. You think you can manage your way out of it, but really all you can do is to go with the skid. 1”
Will Bubbles Work?
The NBA and NHL experimented with bubbles when they came back for the remainder of their 2019-2020 seasons. While not a permanent solution, it worked for the few months they needed. Bubbles are one possible solution and theaters are experimenting with them. Other solutions include virtual performances, special masks, and social distancing practice.
The Berkshire Theatre Group in Pittsfield, MA, created a bubble for their performance of Godspell in August and September. Auditions were done via Zoom, but the cast and crew lived together for the duration of rehearsals and the run of performances. During performances, audience members wore masks and were seated 25 feet away from the stage. The experiment worked; no one got sick and the Actors’ Equity Association approved the production, the first time it approved a musical since the pandemic started 2.
Housing your cast and crew may not be entirely feasible for everyone, especially in cities. The Harley School in Rochester, NY, has special masks for music and drama students that reduce aerosols but allow for singing, playing instruments, and projecting of voices. There will probably be a period of innovation in the next few years as performing artists create new ways to stay safe while also being able to produce their art3.
Opportunity for Change
In addition to creating new ways to provide performances in a safe way in the coming years, there is an opportunity to make the performing arts even better or to reinvent themselves. Accessibility has been an issue with performing arts; the ticket prices are too high for many people, many groups of people are often excluded, and viewership has been limited to those who can physically attend a show. During the pandemic, many theaters and orchestras have been streaming performances as well as posting recordings of older performances online to view. This can spark a wave of change.
Make Space
Theater and dance are overwhelmingly white. This is bad enough, but a byproduct of this whiteness is diminishing and erasing of performers, writers, and directors of color; “The racist assumptions, lordly practices and bad compromises that have favored some voices and squelched others at every level of production amount to what Jamil Jude, artistic director of True Colors Theater Company in Atlanta, has called ‘a gross case of malpractice4.” As the performing arts reinvents itself in the years after the pandemic, making sure that people of color are present on and behind the stage is not just the right thing to do, it’s also good business sense. Increasing viewership will be important to boost ticket sales and tapping into new audience groups is a good way to do that. And it’s not those employed in performing arts; audience members of color need to be courted and accepted as well. There have been Black Out Night initiatives that offer discounted prices to people of color and feature content catered to them. Initiatives like these are a great way to get new people through the door.
Ticket Prices
Ticket prices have become absurd in many cases. Obviously, wildly successful productions like Hamilton skew the numbers, but “in the 2018-19 Broadway season, theatergoers’ average household income was $261,000, According to research by the Broadway League. Among those 25 and older, 81 percent were college graduates, and 41 percent had a graduate degree. They spent an average of $145.60 on a ticket.5 This is not a cross-section of humanity. We’ve discussed how young people are key to the future of the arts and this is true in this context as well. Young people usually cannot afford very expensive tickets and they need to be courted to ensure that the performing arts remain a central feature of society. The impulse will surely be in the coming years to raise ticket prices. Audiences will need to be socially distant for a while and packed houses will be a thing of the past for the foreseeable future. Any equipment needed to sanitize the air or surfaces will cost money and tickets will seem like the best way to recoup those losses. This would be a huge mistake. There may be some theaters that will not be able to cope otherwise, but any that can really fight hard not to raise ticket prices. It would be a real shame if an already exclusive medium turned into an even more exclusive one.
Streaming
A possible solution to escalating ticket prices is streaming. Before the pandemic, posting recorded versions of performances on websites was not uncommon. The Metropolitan Opera and other companies showed performances in select movie theaters across the country, so it became more possible to view famous operas without going to New York. Building on that precedent, “as performing arts venues make decisions about the future, creating hybrid events that include virtual presence and audience recognition will be important for developing investment in their work.6“
Business and Mission Require Change
Again, these decisions are not just fair, they’re also good business; “Theaters anywhere can now play everywhere, achieving viewership numbers they never dreamed of. Richard Nelson’s “What Do We Need to Talk About?” — produced on Zoom for an eight-week run — was seen by almost 80,000 people. It would have taken a year to accommodate that many people at The Public Theater, Nelson’s home base.7 If even a portion of those views were converted to ticket holders, to subscription members, or to in-person audience members, the impact of that would be huge. Conversion will be a major issue for those who decide to allow streaming. Passive viewership is one thing, but making sure those people actually become active participants is another. And that will be up to the theaters to overcome, but it is more than possible.
Accessibility is also imperative for the arts on a mission level. Director Jamie Lloyd says, “Theater is about trying to connect on a very deep level to another human being, and that can’t be an experience that only certain people have. Everybody needs to have that experience — or have it available to them, anyway.8” And from Artistic Director Oskar Eustis, “just because conditions are hard, it doesn’t let us off the hook; it doesn’t free us of the obligation to try to fulfill our mission. So, we’ve done serialized radio plays. We’ve done Zoom plays; we’ve commissioned two movies. We’re doing everything we can to continue communicating and making our art form viable.9 Very few mission statements in any field specifically say they cater to only a few people. And in the arts, mission statements are usually built around community building, shared experiences, and education. To fulfill those missions, contact with as many people as possible is key.
The situation does seem bleak for performing arts right now, but take comfort in the fact that people are streaming performances at home; “the crisis has also shown us how centrally important culture is for our lives and identities. Culture helps anchor us in the present and allows us to imagine the future.10 There is a hunger for the performing arts and that will hopefully translate into people coming out for performances when they can. Many of the issues listed here existed before the pandemic, but this is an opportunity to emerge better than before.
- “Performing Arts Innovate in Desperate Times,” Marketplace (blog), July 2, 2020, https://www.marketplace.org/2020/07/02/performing-arts-innovate-in-desperate-times/.
- Erik Ofgang, “What We Can Learn From the Most Successful Covid-19 Bubbles,” Medium, October 6, 2020, https://elemental.medium.com/what-we-can-learn-from-the-most-successful-covid-19-bubbles-4b52495d9fd4.
- “Keeping Students Participating in the Performing Arts During COVID,” The Harley School (blog), October 20, 2020, https://www.harleyschool.org/keeping-students-participating-in-the-performing-arts-during-covid/.
- “How to Birth a New American Theater – The New York Times,” accessed February 11, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/11/theater/how-to-change-theater.html?referringSource=articleShare.
- Ibid
- Sarah Bay-Cheng, “4 Lessons from the NBA Bubble for the Future of Live Arts Performance,” The Conversation, accessed February 11, 2021, http://theconversation.com/4-lessons-from-the-nba-bubble-for-the-future-of-live-arts-performance-146068.
- “How to Birth a New American Theater – The New York Times,” accessed February 11, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/11/theater/how-to-change-theater.html?referringSource=articleShare.
- IBAD
- “What Will The Future Of Theater Look Like? ‘Our Artists Are Going To Lead Us,’” NPR.org, accessed February 11, 2021, https://www.npr.org/2020/09/20/914251681/what-will-the-future-of-theater-look-like-our-artists-are-going-to-lead-us.
- Audrey Azoulay Snyder Rahul Bhatia, Rick Cordella, Mark C. Hanson, Baltasar Kormakur, Jonathan Kuntz, David Clay Large, James S., “Culture Shock,” Foreign Policy (blog), accessed February 11, 2021, https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/08/15/covid-19-pandemic-culture-sports-entertainment/.