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Indiana arts groups dealing with pandemic postponements

SOUTH BEND, Ind. - Arts organizations often call themselves “a light in the darkness” — a source of hope, meaning and solace that, especially with the performing arts, brings people together as a community.

“Going to a performance is an event,” the president of The Acting Ensemble’s board, Melissa Gard, says. “You go to dinner first, you talk about it afterward. It’s a social event.”

But for the foreseeable future, the nation’s theatres, concert venues and museums have gone dark as the country tries to stem the spread of the global pandemic COVID-19.

“Just as we do our shows for the good of the community,” South Bend Civic Theatre Executive Director Aaron Nichols says, “now we’re not doing our shows for the good of the community.”

For Civic, both “Emma,” which was to have opened March 20, and its co-production with the South Bend Symphony Orchestra of “West Side Story” have been postponed, the former to as soon as logistically possible and the latter, most likely, to 2021.

The SBSO also has cancelled its April 4 and May 2 Masterworks concerts at the Morris Performing Arts Center.

SBSO Executive Director Justus Zimmerman, who began work in January, says, however, that he remains hopeful that at least one of those concerts might still get rescheduled for some time in the summer “so that the art doesn’t go away, it just gets delayed.”

But, he says, “that really depends on if this do-not-congregate order gets extended or not. Our hope is to have one final get-together at the Morris where we invite everybody in and congregate as a community. … I think that’s important for our community and for our musicians.”

All four of South Bend’s museums — the South Bend Museum of Art, The History Museum, the Studebaker National Museum and the University of Notre Dame’s Snite Museum of Art — have closed.

“We had originally thought we could keep the galleries open because we don’t have throngs of people. It’s more of a trickle,” SBMA Executive Director Susan Visser says about the March 16 decision. “We thought it could be a place for people who could get out to go, but then it became more and more apparent it would be better not to give people a place to go.”

Initially, the Midwest Museum of American Art in Elkhart intended to remain open at least until March 29, but that changed when its board of directs decided to close until March 31.

“It’s sad, a world without art,” Director and Curator Brian Byrn says. “Where is the guiding light? … I hope this serves as a good reminder, that people say, ‘I want to support the South Bend Civic or Premier Arts or the Elkhart Symphony.’”

Elkhart Civic Theatre is working on rescheduling its productions of “I’ll Be Back Before Midnight” from Friday through April 5 and “Drinking Habits” from May 1 to 10. A sketch comedy show, “Right Place, Wrong Time,” also should get rescheduled.

“One issue is what volunteer availability we have,” ECT Executive Director Dave Dufour says. “When you move a show, you run into the possibility that someone who’s in the show now won’t be available.”

Nichols already is confronting that problem with “Emma”: About half of the cast won’t be available for when it eventually opens. He also might have to recast portions of “West Side Story” next year, especially with some of the actors being professionals from New York City and Chicago.

So far, The Acting Ensemble has had to postpone only its April staged reading but anticipates doing the same for May’s. Even before COVID-19 hit, the theatre had already decided not to produce a mainstage production again until it finishes renovating its new building, at 602 E. Mishawaka Ave., in Mishawaka.

It’s unfortunate and difficult not to have even the monthly staged readings, but for now, though, Gard stresses the importance of social distancing to flatten the curve of the virus’s spread.

“We have to realize this is not an annoyance,” she says. “This is a reality. We will have to think differently and we will have to practice differently once we get back in business. And it’s not impossible to do that.”

In the absence of public events, local arts organizations are trying to answer the bottom-line question Nichols asks about how to remain visible when inactive: “How do we bring people together when everyone is telling us to stay apart?”

The internet, of course, provides much of the answer. Social media posts, email blasts and newsletters already are common, but some organizations are creating new content just for the crisis.

SB Civic launched #CivicLight on Thursday, for example.

Billed as a virtual stage and viewable on the theatre’s website and at bit.ly/civiclight, it invites artists in the community to upload videos of themselves being creative during this time of social distancing, whether that means singing a song, performing a monologue or doing something silly.

Elkhart Civic’s Dufour says he and the theatre’s staff are developing a series of memes for Instagram “that would keep people closer to the theatre.”

The content would be “quotes from plays that are inspirational, good things to think about, positive kinds of ideas that come from theatrical productions,” he says.

The SBMA also has and continues to create new online materials for the community, including galleries and educational materials.

“The Kent Bicentennial Portfolio Tour,” for example, is a virtual classroom experience appropriate for ages 10 and older with a focus on how ideas are communicated through the elements of art.

The “Ekphrastic Event for Sharing the Muse” transfers what had been planned as a live event to the internet and consists of local writers reading descriptive, interpretive poems inspired by the art in SBMA’s galleries. So far, 22 poets have participated, and SBMA will soon begin accepting more submissions.

“We hope to interrupt some of that TV bingeing with perhaps some art-looking bingeing,” Visser says about the new online content. “That’s why we decided to provide some enhanced experiences.”

Some larger arts organizations across the country have been able to stream either current or past productions, but each theatre’s ability to do so depends upon what rights it acquires when it licenses a play.

“This is what is hurting all organizations that are producing product they do not write,” SB Civic’s Nichols says. “There are a lot of covenants and rules that say you won’t record or broadcast this content. … All arts organizations would love to do that and connect with our patrons in that way; however, because of our signed contracts, we cannot do that.”

That doesn’t mean he isn’t trying. Civic has asked the rights holder for “Emma” to allow it to stream a single performance with its original cast during this period, even if it’s available only to Civic staff and regular patrons via a password.

“We would like the opportunity for those people who were, literally, five days away from opening” to perform the play, Nichols says. “All they need is an audience.”

Beyond the postponements that mean arts organizations can’t provide the solidarity and compassion in troubled times that many people turn to them for, they also face financial challenges because of COVID-19.

They may be non profits, Nichols says, but they’re also businesses that need to raise enough revenue each year to remain in operation.

“Readers should know that arts organizations are making some really hard decisions,” he says. “I don’t think any of us are acting irresponsibly. We’re cutting to the quick to come out of this as healthy as possible. It’s tragic for me, because we have some great momentum, but some of that will have to slow.”

The SBSO decided to call the April 4 and May 2 concerts cancellations instead of postponements so that its ticketholders would be able to decide what they want to do now: donate their tickets and receive a tax deduction, exchange them for a concert next season or get a refund.

The orchestra, Zimmerman says, encourages its patrons to donate their tickets, because, like every individual and business, arts-related or not, it will be hurt financially because of COVID-19.

“During ’08, ’09, donor revenues took a real hit,” he says about the SBSO. “It was a real challenge for our organization and for years coming out of it. This will definitely ripple, financially, for us for years.”

But there’s a significant difference between the Great Recession and now: the moratorium on public gatherings.

“Dollars aside, we exist to put on these performances for people,” Zimmerman says. “Even during the recession, we could still do that and maybe even make it cheaper for people. This is a real challenge.”

For The Acting Ensemble, it now has a mortgage to pay on a building that probably won’t be ready until fall. It’s talked to its bank and already was applying for grants because of the renovation to the new building. A fundraiser has now been postponed, too.

“We’re theatre people,” Gard says. “We don’t give up. We’re creative and watching for opportunities. We’re pulling together, and if an alternative theatre is as important as people tell me it is, then somehow we’ll make it work. I don’t know how else to approach it.”

But there are, at least, perceptional risks to stepping up fundraising immediately.

“Right now, the most important are the individuals who are impacted by this,” Nichols says. “I think there’s a lot of fear not just in the arts community but in our whole community: ‘How will I pay the rent or feed my kids?’ I don’t want to be so crass as to say, ‘Give to an art organization.’ We know that your own safety and physical well-being comes first.”

Eventually, public gatherings will be allowed again — presumably. When that time comes, the area’s arts organizations want to be ready to provide that and believe it’ll be necessary.

“Modern life is profoundly lonely, and I do believe some of these activities we do in groups mitigates some of that loneliness,” SB Civic’s Nichols says. “Netflix does not make that loneliness better, but live events do. … I believe there will be a restorative side where we say we did this for the right reasons, but now we’re coming back together for the right reasons.”

Byrn, however, says he believes people will have post-traumatic stress after the pandemic passes and that a “stigma” will linger over group activities at first.

“It will be interesting to see how soon people feel comfortable coming back to congregate and sit in a room with a thousand other people,” the SBSO’s Zimmerman says along the same lines. “It will take some time to build back that trust.”

But Visser hopes for just the opposite.

“I think there’s going to be such a huge feeling of relief when we’re beyond the devastation of this virus that maybe there will be a celebration of all things joyous,” she says, “which certainly describes the arts.”

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Source: South Bend Tribune

News from © The Associated Press, 2020
The Associated Press

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