Return of the Arts: The Show Must Go On

Listen and Subscribe

• 

  iTunes

• 

  Spotify

• 

  Stitcher

• 

  PlayerFM

Transcript

Alyssa Hurst:

You're listening to RadioED

Nicole Militello:

a University of Denver podcast.

Lorne Fultonberg:

We're your hosts: Lorne Fultonberg.

Alyssa Hurst:

Alyssa Hurst.

Nicole Militello:

And I'm Nicole Militello. After months and months of waiting, the show must go on. Today several major Broadway shows are returning. Stages have been dark, audience seats have been empty and thousands of workers who make up the cast and crew have been left in limbo since March of last year. And it's not just Broadway, it's creative performances across the board, affecting musicians, dancers, artists, actors, and more. We're going to talk about the return of the arts and how the industry was impacted with Aisha Ahmad-Post, the Executive Director of the Newman Center for the Performing Arts here in Denver in just a moment. But first I want to share a story from University of Denver alum, Karyn Meek. She spent nearly two decades as a stage manager. She most recently was working on Disney's the Lion King and now with Broadway's return, she's part of a new show. She shared with me what the past year and a half looked like from her view.

Karyn Meek:

In 2020, I was the production stage manager on Disney's the Lion King national tour. We were in South Bend, Indiana, when the shutdown happened. That was March 12th and we were all on the road, so we got sent back home. And for some of us, we didn't have places to live and some of us did. I went to live with my parents because my apartment was rented out and it was a huge shock. I was out of work up until just now, September of 2021, because of it. When we originally shut down, they said; "We'll see you guys in about two weeks or so". And I remember over packing, thinking there's no way it's going to be two weeks it's probably going to be about four, and that was not okay. When you're on the road, you live and work with the people you travel with.

Karyn Meek:

And it's a such intimate family, because we're a moving city of 117 people that pick up and go every time. And then to suddenly, with like the snap of a finger, be ripped from that and again, for many of them not have a place to live or to go was shocking. I can't even begin to describe how devastating it is for us. For me personally, I give my life to my profession. I always had, or I did before all of this. And it was so hard to be completely unable, it's not like I could remote in doing a show. So there was no work.

Karyn Meek:

It's a proven fact that audience members who attend a performance together, their hearts sink up and the rhythms that they keep, they are affected by everybody around them. And I think that community emotion and feeling that we lose without the arts. That creationary force drives us all. That's why we're humans. We're always out there creating something, whether it be a business or whether it be an art form. But there's something about that synchronicity of heart that just says to me, as human beings, we belong in a group together and experiencing something together. And we've lost that. I think all of us have discovered things that we didn't know were missing in this industry because we work at night primarily, and sometimes you'll have rehearsal or work calls all day long. If you have children, you don't get to see them very much. And we've had a year and a half of people being able to put their children to bed and wake up and make breakfast in the morning with them, that wasn't possible before.

Karyn Meek:

And I can almost guarantee you that the people will get the shows back up, the ones that have been open. And then you're going to see a mass of resignations. They'll do what they feel is their duty to get the show back up. And then they're going to say, you know what, no, I'm not going to work six days a week, 80 hours a week. And I want to spend time with my children and my family. Going forward, I have set boundaries for my life because I learned in this year and a half, there are things that I love to do that I don't have anything to do with about my profession. And that's the benefit that I've taken away from this time. So much self evaluation and so much growth has happened as a result of it and I'm weirdly grateful for that time, but I am determined not to go back to the unhealthy practices in my work life balance that were there before it's not worth it anymore.

Nicole Militello:

That was DU alum, Karen Meek Now to the Executive Director of the Newman Center for the Performing Arts, Aisha Ahmad-Post. She shares the impact the pandemic had on the arts. And she starts from back in March of 2020, when stages abruptly went dark when the pandemic hit.

Aisha Ahmad-Post:

What I really felt horrible for were the artists themselves, because the way that it works in most of these cases is that they only get paid once the performance happens. So they're not paid upfront for rehearsing or for training up to be back on stage or any of those things. They get their fee after they've provided that service. There's been a lot of conversations about that since then, and whether that's an equitable way to construct these contracts, but it's certainly a longstanding practice in the industry. So all of a sudden, all these folks who had tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of contracts and plans for savings and paying their mortgage and whatever it is, just that breaking overnight. And it was really scary. It was really scary for, not just the artists, but then also for over hire backstage, the stage crew, the volunteers, the part-time box office staff, the hospitality staff, it's a really complex and intricate industry that reaches a lot of different areas. And I don't think people always necessarily realize that.

Nicole Militello:

Yeah, and I think that's a really important part of this conversation because when the shutdown happened, a lot of workers were able to very easily transition to working from home for their jobs. And some artists were able to, and it took a little working out but for a lot of them, their job was just really non-existent for months. So can you just talk about some of the challenges that were associated with that?

Aisha Ahmad-Post:

You know, it's interesting that you ask about that because the reason we were all able to switch was because we had Zoom and Teams and all of these infrastructure that we had sort of been building out for office workers. The folks that do the best, I think during the pandemic were the arts organizations that had a tremendous amount of video archive. So I'm thinking of the Alvin Ailey dance theater, I'm thinking of the metropolitan opera. These are folks who had years and years of high quality product that they could stream or make available on Facebook or what have you. They did great on pivoting to being a more virtual provider. It's an extraordinarily difficult thing to and I'm not really sure people fully realize those implications either because there's the broadcast rights, there's the licensing for the work there's recording rights.

Aisha Ahmad-Post:

There's the streaming grades. There's all these different ways that you have to sort of navigate that and our contracts are made with the intention to broadcast or live stream this content. And so usually that's a whole different bag of tricks. So that was a pretty tough transition. I think a lot of artists also found that they just didn't know how to monetize that time. And there was this again, you've seen tens of thousands of dollars of contracts evaporate, and you're sitting at home and you're just trying to think about how you're going to frankly, make some money to eat. And so I think there was a lot of streaming of things on Facebook and then that kind of petered out. But the good news is that it did allow for a lot of folks to make work with people that aren't necessarily in their vicinity.

Aisha Ahmad-Post:

So, again, using all of these collaboration platforms, people could record albums, they could play bass on somebody else's project. And we got really good at building even more. I mean, it was already part of the process for the music industry, but even more so I think individual and independent artists were moving towards that sort of structure. And I think a lot of people also kind of sat there and said, "I don't know what to do with this". Not everybody had this well of creative expression just sitting at home. I think a lot of folks were sort of dealing with the shock of what it was just like everybody else.

Nicole Militello:

And there are a lot of different reports, but a lot of them are estimating that there was billions of dollars in financial loss for the arts industry during the shutdown. What are some of the financial consequences of that?

Aisha Ahmad-Post:

I don't know that I could possibly overstate how catastrophic this was for the arts industry. There's the ticket revenue. So there's that piece of it, concessions, parking, et cetera. But then there's also the donation side of things. There is the auxiliary marketing, corporate sponsorships foundation grants, all the rest of these things that go into the portfolio of revenue that you get from, I'm speaking specifically from a performing arts center standpoint, but also for an arts organization, a nonprofit arts organization. Without doing those shows, it's extraordinarily difficult. Now we did, thanks to the National Independent Venues association, which was created in the middle of the pandemic, which was kind of an amazing moment. They were able to lobby Congress for the Save Our Stages Act. We were able to get a $16 million relief grant from Congress.

Aisha Ahmad-Post:

Unfortunately, the rollout of that was not pristine. It took over six months for anybody to see any of those funds. And when you haven't had any revenue for nine months, six months more can be life or death. So that was a little difficult for us. But yeah, I mean, other than, than relief grants, I mean, a lot of folks had to lay off staff. I'm seeing a lot of folks who have changed to different industries. Some of them dropped out of the workforce to take care of kiddos or elders or whatever else. Some people realize that they just didn't want to work 80 hours a week, where that it was really nice to have their nights and weekends to themselves. So I think it was a fairly profound shift, certainly for arts workers and thinking about what we want our life balance work-life balance to look like. Yeah.

Nicole Militello:

And the financial loss is really just one part of this. What different, like creative elements do you think were lost over this time?

Aisha Ahmad-Post:

I mean, we lost entire organizations. We lost entire dance companies folded, theaters folded, musical groups folded. So we have a huge loss in that part of our ecosystem. I think we lost, a little bit of, it's going to take a lot of work, let me put it that way to get audiences back into the theater, to make a habit out of going to arts events, because they either feel reticent even with the vaccines and with all of the work everybody's done and putting new filtration systems in, what have you. I think we were doing really well and then the Delta variant just changed everything. And you're seeing a lot of ticket buyer hesitancy because they just don't know what's going to happen in three months. So that's a pretty lasting effect.

Aisha Ahmad-Post:

And I think we're also starting to sort of question what is the most important in terms of what we do. Do we have to be running ourselves ragged, trying to put on all of these events all year? What does the market really need and how do we make sure this is a sustainable field that doesn't take advantage of its arts workers? Because I think that was part of, there's always been this sort of perception like, oh, well, if you're going to be in something as "frivolous" as the arts, and you should also starve for the privilege right? It's like, no, this is a massive part of the American economy. We are a net exporter of arts and culture. Arts and culture are a net export for the United States compared to what we import. We are a bigger industry than agriculture. We're. I mean, it's a massive, massive piece of how America is seen in the global economy. And we need to start treating arts workers like the real, like the work it is, and not expecting people to not make any money and also work 80 to a hundred hours a week.

Nicole Militello:

Definitely. I want to have more of that conversation a little bit later on, too, on the flip side of that, do you think anything was gained during this time away during the shutdown?

Aisha Ahmad-Post:

Yeah, I think it was really good for everybody to have a moment to just sort of sit. There was a lot of rhetoric at the beginning of the pandemic that said; "Oh, arts are essential". And you know what? There came a point where, nope, we weren't. We're not like, we weren't essential in the way that frontline medical workers were, right? Now, listen, everybody sat there at home and listened to music and watched TV shows and read books, right? These are all ventures and engaging with arts in one way or the other. So I don't think that that should be discounted in any way, shape or form, but because we were grinding to a halt, a lot of us had an opportunity to actually sit down and think for a moment. And I started my job at DU on August 1st, 2020. So, I also had the opportunity to sort of sit and breathe for a second and wonder about what I wanted to do with the venue. And where I want the Newman Center to grow, who we want to be for the community, for the city of Denver, for the University of Denver. So that was really, really refreshing because I'm not sure that I'll ever have an opportunity like that again.

Nicole Militello:

Yeah. And that's something I've actually heard a lot that it was just a time to like kind of reprioritize and think about what you're doing. And like you mentioned before, a lot of workers who weren't able to tuck their kids into bed every night had that time during the break. And I'm wondering how do you see this time to reset impacting performers and artists moving forward?

Aisha Ahmad-Post:

Yeah, I mean, certainly there was, again, a brain drain, I think we did see some folks leave the field. I've also been really pleasantly surprised to see how many people were willing to stay on throughout the entire pandemic and were looking forward to coming back to this because this is the work that they want to be in. It's something they're passionate about and the thing that they love to do. I think it was interesting, actually, I forget if it was Dance or Acquaint magazine, did a whole article on the number of ballerinas who took that time to have babies and and to think through. I mean, especially for such a physically demanding job as that, it gave them that opportunity that they might not otherwise have had, because it's such a short career. So, and I think most of all, it gave us all a moment to think about what we want a sustainable touring arts ecosystem to look like, right.

Aisha Ahmad-Post:

So what should the payment structure look like? Do presenters or venues have too much power when it comes to a force majeure clause? Should we be approaching these contracts more as an equitable partnership between artist and center? What is the real role of an agent or manager? And how do we make sure that everybody who's involved in the industry is getting a fair shake? Because the agents and managers, that's a whole other part we haven't talked about and the artists don't get paid, agents don't get paid They've done all of that work already, right? They booked that tour two years ago. They advanced the whole thing. They've done all of the work and we did not get paid for it. So I think there's a lot of reckoning about the imbalance of power and the justice of the arts and commerce sector.

Aisha Ahmad-Post:

And you add that in with the protest and the movement around the murder of George Floyd. And the arts have always been at the forefront of any social justice or economic justice movement. And so that compounded, and there were a lot of conversations about, okay, well, such and such an arts organization, put up their black lives matter statement on their website, but then didn't actually do anything about it. So how are we holding them accountable? So I thought those were all really important, interesting conversations. And I do think that the system isn't fundamentally different than it was on March 1st, 2020.

Nicole Militello:

Yeah. And a lot of the articles that I've been reading have also brought up the point just of dancers kind of missing out on their prime years or like child actors who have now phased out of the role that they were performing. And with just like the relaunch, people having to like recondition their bodies and voices to get back to performing on the stage. How hard of a process is that?

Aisha Ahmad-Post:

Yeah. So I can speak from my own personal experience as a pianist So when I was really serious about playing, I was practicing, realistically, probably around three to five hours a day and then I would also have rehearsals and performances and all the rest of that. There's a tremendous amount of work that goes into that level of fine motor skill. That level of physical technique and finesse, and also thinking through your artistic expression, memorizing these hugely complicated scores, just all of it. There's an incredible amount of preparation.

Aisha Ahmad-Post:

Dancers, I think it's really, really tough to keep yourself at a professional level if you're not dancing every day in the studio. I mean, you can give yourself class every day, but that's not going to be the same as being able to do hours and hours of rehearsal for whatever ballets. And so I really feel for those folks because it's going to be a really rough road getting back to that. And I mean, not that they can't do it, they absolutely will. And don't get me wrong, plenty of people were doing everything they could to stay in shape and at the top of their game during the pandemic, but it's going to be a lot of work for those folks.

Nicole Militello:

Yeah. We recently did a podcast on like the Olympics being pushed back for a year and we were having this same conversation basically about athletes. You know, it's like, how do you continue to train in this off time when everything is shut down and really the same applies for performers.

Aisha Ahmad-Post:

Yes, I actually, a lot of that, the Olympics, sometimes I find them hard to watch because it does feel so much like a performance, right? You have one shot to do that dive perfectly, right? You have one shot to nail those 32 fortes or whatever it is and that pressure and that performance anxiety and the training of your mental landscape to be able to perform at that highest level when there's so much on the line. I think it's something that folks don't really see or really think about until they're verbally confronted with that. But a lot of times we're doing this on and stages that just aren't as global as the Olympics on, but are nonetheless just as a competitive and fierce and there was always the risk of an injury if you're not in your best shape.

Nicole Militello:

Another thing that I want to talk about, we've kind of already touched on this a little bit, but I think it's really an important part of the conversation is the conversation that's arisen out of this time for a push for better working conditions and critiquing some of Broadway's priorities. There have been some articles recently about some Broadway stars who have said they will not return because of this. And I'm just curious if you can talk a little bit more about that and what kind of conversations you're hearing,

Aisha Ahmad-Post:

I'm not as familiar with the Broadway side of things, but I do think that there's a host of inequitable in difficult work environments, right? I mean, at least with the Broadway shows, they're doing eight shows a week. A lot of times you were singing and dancing and acting and you're exhausted at the end of the day, especially on those two show days on Wednesdays. And so I think that that's something that's really worth considering, right? And again, it's the question of are folks being paid fairly? Are there, should we really be rethinking what we consider to be an equitable way of achieving what we want to do? And for a house like the Met or a Broadway house or even some of these bigger ones, how do you make sure that artists can perform at their best and that we're not burning them out?

Aisha Ahmad-Post:

We talked a little bit about this, but dancers, usually there is a limit to their career, right? They have to retire at a certain amount of time because it just takes a toll on the body. But when you think of opera singers, for instance, right, their voices, don't mature until they're a little bit older, usually they're late twenties, early thirties. So then you have this whole period of time in your twenties where, you might be sitting in a corner somewhere where you might be, just training and training and training or hiding out in grad school or whatever it is until your voice matures enough for you to sing these real big juicy roles. So when you've done all of that work and then you get into the environment and it's abusive, when it's sexist or exploited it because of the power differential.

Aisha Ahmad-Post:

I think that that is a moment where we all need to step back and look, and I think pretty much any artist can tell you all sorts of stories about the director or the person in charge taking advantage of this. The younger artists who were just hungry to make their career happen. And because of that power dynamic, they can sort of force these younger artists to just do whatever it takes to, to make the show happen. And I'm sorry, it's just not, that should not be part of it. People should not be sexually harassed at work just because they chose to go into the performing arts. They should not be subject to ADM or work mixed. They should not be subject to fat shaming or whatever else is happening out there. I mean, it's, I think we're having a real reckoning about the way that we treat each other on stage, in the rehearsal room.

Nicole Militello:

Another New York times article that I was reading, it's just talking about how the return of the arts, like Broadway and other concert halls is really vital to cities come back, especially places like New York city. And I just wanted to get your take, why is it so important for the reestablishment of this culture to kind of lead the way for our return?

Aisha Ahmad-Post:

Well, a city is only as dynamic as its art scene, right? And that can be a really broad question about culinary arts, literary arts, and theater and dance, music, film, whatever it is. But that is without any of those pieces of the fabric of our society, we lose a really important part of our civic conversation. We lose our common humanity. And I think there's a lot of, there's a lot that's that can be said about a city that values its arts, because it shows that they care about who they are and what they have to say compared to another city elsewhere in the country or the world.

Nicole Militello:

Yeah. And I've seen a lot of like feel-good videos going around on social media, like theaters full again, audience clapping performers back on stage and traveling on the road. What does the return of the arts represent? And what does that mean for you?

Aisha Ahmad-Post:

To me, it means resilience. It's a really overwhelming feeling to be able to say that we're going to be able to have shows again. I went to a show for the first time indoors a couple of weeks ago and I had sort of forgotten just like the visceral feeling of listening to live music with a bunch of other bodies in the space. That is just as much a part of the performance as of the performer itself themselves. It's been a very, very long 18 months and it will take us a long time to recover from this. But I think there's just so much, if anything, it's just solidified that I love to do this work. And I love to share these artists with audiences and how much I'm looking forward to inviting people back into the Newman Center or to see them go to the Denver Center for the Performing Arts or Red Rocks or whatever else, and that this is part of why we all choose to live in Denver

Nicole Militello:

To read more about the financial impact of the arts, or to see the details for the upcoming season at the Newman Center for the Performing Arts visit our show notes at DU.EDU/radioed. Alyssa Hurst is our Executive Producer. Tamar Chapman is our Managing Editor and James Wearing arranged our theme. I'm Nicole Militello and this is RadioEd.