“Roughly 90% of our members are affected,” said Horace Trubridge, general secretary of the Musicians’ Union. “This will force musicians out of the profession. Our members also do a lot of event work – weddings and conferences – that has also fallen off a cliff, coupled with the fact that most of our members subsidise their income from live performance by teaching and studio recording work which of course they can’t do now either.” The idea that universal credit is going to keep these people’s heads above water is a nonsense. – The Guardian
This Book Fair Isn’t Being Cancelled, It’s Making Itself Virtual
“Book festival Wordplay, originally slated to take place in Minneapolis in May, will now happen virtually in April and May in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. All of the original 100+ participants, including Alison Roman, Michael Ian Black, Charles Yu and Scott Pelley, are still slated to take part in the festival.” Steph Opitz, Wordplay’s founding director, tells a reporter how it’s coming together. – Forbes
Cincinnati Ballet And Playhouse In The Park Were In The Middle Of Building New Homes When The Pandemic Hit
“First, you should know that neither group is on the brink of institutional disaster. The Playhouse has $10 million more to raise [out of almost $50 million] before the fall. The ballet’s project, according to the company’s web site, was 94.8 percent funded as of Feb. 25.” – Cincinnati Enquirer
Buffering … — Why Video Teleconferencing Is Still A Pain In The Wherever
“[Online conference calls] come with problems — technical, cultural, and practical. And a lot of the challenges we have with [them] come down to the many small quirks of the internet. … Despite four decades of evolving technology, video conferencing is a sort of low-level magic that still konks out half the time. Here’s why.” – Tedium
Is This Chatbot My New Best Friend?
To give users a personalised experience, the deep learning bot gathers information about conversation partners by asking them questions, adapts to their conversational style and, over time, attempts to mimic them. Beyond companionship, Replika’s creators believe that the technology could eventually serve as a conversational stand-in for deceased loves ones. – Aeon
Maybe Figuring Out How To Get Your Work To An Audience Is Part Of The Creative Challenge
Playwright Nick Green created the Social Distancing Festival website to host rehearsal videos, designs, photos, excerpts and other pieces of work that have been cancelled or postponed in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. He put out a call for submissions on Saturday, March 14. By the next day he had 23,000 page views and, as of Thursday, 270,000 unique visitors. – Toronto Star
Asked If France ‘Missed The Boat On #MeToo’, Isabelle Huppert Throws The Interviewer Out
Laura Cappelle has plenty of good things in her profile as well, but yes, this happened: “In a matter of seconds, Huppert is on her feet and walks away from me, manifestly irked. ‘Listen, here, now I have to work.'” – The Guardian
Devastated US Arts Industry Looks For Government Assistance
It has not been an easy sell, coming at a time when many pillars of the economy, from airlines to restaurants to public transportation, are facing existential crises and needing handouts themselves. But it is a fight the country’s museums and performing arts groups are used to waging. – The New York Times
How Theater In America Handled It Last Time There Was A Pandemic
To find out, you have to go back 102 years to the 1918 influenza epidemic. “Even when people knew in advance the closures were imminent and that deaths were surging, they didn’t relinquish theatregoing easily.” – American Theatre
Arts Council England Pledges £160 Million To Arts For Virus Response
The money is intended to prevent artists and arts organisations from going bust, but is also designed to help them come up with creative responses “to buoy the public” during the lockdown. – The Guardian
Museums And Art Handlers Are Giving Their Masks And Gloves To Hospitals
“Art spaces … are doing their part to meet the needs of medical professionals, packing up crates of gloves typically used to protect artworks from oil and dust on the hands of those touching artworks and sending off coveted N95 respirators that protect front-line health care workers from the virus.” – ARTnews
What Dancers Are Doing To Maintain During Lockdown
The recently interrupted tours, canceled premieres, locked studios and social distancing requirements have hit the financially fragile, socially enmeshed dance world hard. When your life revolves around lifting, leaping, catching, jumping and otherwise spending time (often literally joined at the hip) with your dance partners, how do you deal with solitary confinement? – Washington Post
Librarians: If We Can’t Lend Books During Lockdown, Let’s Make Our Buildings And Bookmobiles Wi-Fi Hotspots
“The [American Library Association] urged the FCC to waive E-rate restrictions so libraries could not only offer [free] Wi-Fi access via local libraries, but could also provide broadband service to disconnected communities via bookmobiles and mobile hotspots without running afoul of FCC rules.” – Vice
Remembering Terrence McNally
Perhaps the most important comic voice in theater since Neil Simon, McNally wrote to amuse and awaken. Laughter for him was the greatest survival tool ever invented. Humor was his shield against the homophobia he experienced as a Catholic boy growing up in Texas, against the losses that rained down on him and his community during the worst days of the AIDS crisis and against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune — which in showbiz is even more outrageous than usual. – Los Angeles Times
Albert Uderzo, Co-Creator Of Astérix The Gaul, Dead At 92
“Born colorblind and with six fingers on each hand, [he] became one of the world’s most acclaimed cartoonists, known for drawing characters that ranged from the sword-wielding Astérix — with his winged helmet, bulbous nose and horseshoe mustache — to the roly-poly Obélix, a stonemason who joins Astérix in defending their village from Roman legionaries.” – The Washington Post
What Will America’s Arts Economy Be Like After COVID? How Can Artists Survive? (It’s Not A Pretty Picture)
Zach Finkelstein does not sugar-coat the situation: “The tragic irony of this crisis is that, in the post-COVID era, the person most likely to have a performance career will be the one that can last the longest without performing. … The most effective route to survival in the post-COVID word will require artists to build another set of marketable skills, with training to start immediately.” – The Middle-Class Artist
Yvonne Rainer Creates An At-Home Dance For Coronavirus Quarantine
Brian Seibert: “She calls it Passing and Jostling While Being Confined to a Small Apartment. It’s a dance history exercise [for Seibert’s class at Yale], but it occurred to me that it might double as a diversion for people now cooped up at home; it’s something that anyone can attempt, carefully. Ms. Rainer agreed. So here I can present her first dance for the socially isolated.” – The New York Times
There Will Be No Spoleto Festival USA This Year
“After spending about $4.5 million that can’t be recovered, [the] Festival now must cope with a projected $756,000 deficit for 2020. (It did manage to avoid spending another $4.5 million that had been budgeted.)” No job cuts or furloughs are planned, and much of this year’s programming will be moved to 2021. – The Post and Courier (Charleston)
Ojai Music Festival Cancelled
“The Ojai Music Festival has joined the list of coronavirus cancellations, … marking the first time since its founding in 1947 that the annual celebration of experimental classical music will not be held.” This year’s guest music director was to have been German composer Matthias Pintscher. – Los Angeles Times
San Francisco Art Institute Stops Enrolling Students, Prepares To Lay Off Faculty And Staff
The nearly 150-year-old school, which counts Ansel Adams, Richard Diebenkorn, and Dorothea Lange as former faculty, says that it can’t continue to operate in the near term unless it joins a larger and more stable institution. Administrators expect to cancel all fall semester classes. Students graduating this spring will get their degrees; others are being strongly encouraged to transfer elsewhere. – San Francisco Chronicle
Playwright Terrence McNally Dies Of Coronavirus, Age 81
McNally, once referred to as “the quintessential man of the theater” by actress Zoe Caldwell, died from complications related to the coronavirus, according to his publicist Matt Polk. He was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2001 and twice underwent surgery. – Los Angeles Times
Thanks To Social Distancing, Drive-In Movie Theaters Are Having A Comeback
“Drive-in movie theaters may seem like a blast from the past, something out of the 1950s or ’60s. Numerous baby boomers haven’t gone for decades; Gen Xers and millennials, perhaps never. But there are still 305 of them in the United States” — and they’re seeing increased demand from stir-crazy customers. – The New York Times
Voting for arts funding – a short video
We are making the adjustment to teaching arts policy at a distance for the remainder of the semester, and so I’m about to get used to (and hopefully better at) short videos for students, practitioners, anyone with an interest. – Michael Rushton
Second City Lays Off Two-Thirds Of Employees
“With its shows canceled until further notice and its revenue stream obliterated, Chicago’s most illustrious comedy theater … is trying to improvise its way out of a major crisis. … [Job losses] includ[e] all casts, front-of-house workers and food and beverage workers.” – Chicago Tribune
Movie Theatres Reopen In China As Threat Recedes For Now
No one is comfortable buying tickets yet (literally no one, as in zero people, in two of the provinces where theatres reopened), but the distributors had a plan for that: “Most of the films currently available are re-runs of recent and popular Chinese movies, a move that is intended to minimize risk.” – Variety