Sunday, February 06, 2022

Worth a Look

Here are a few posts from last week's Greenpage that might be worth your time...

Get Past the Lobby: Theatres Rethink How We Gather

AMERICAN THEATRE: To say that the mission and priorities of the average theatre company have changed in the past few years is a gross understatement. From navigating staffing and programming upheavals due to the pandemic, to suddenly becoming the bellwethers of health and safety strategy, to interrogating internal power structures within our organizations following both the #MeToo movement and the racial justice uprising in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, we have seen an unprecedented shift in culture that would have been hard to fathom just two short years ago.

 

It's become a different world

Chicago Reader: We see a show and later learn that it had to close abruptly. We can empathize with the actors’ disappointment and distress because we can visualize their faces and recall their voices. But how has the pandemic impacted those we see only briefly in the lobby as we enter or don’t see at all? How are they managing this crisis?

 

Protecting the creative economy during COVID: Arts and the artists drive local economy

TheHill: Since its founding in 1935, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF), has grown into one of the leaders of modern American theater and one of the largest economic drivers of the Southern Oregon economy. In a typical year, we welcome over 400,000 people from all over the world who visit our three theaters including the oldest Elizabethan theater in the U.S.

 

Can artists wake us from COVID apathy?

limelightmagazine.com.au: Bob Dylan’s words from 1963 could have been written today. The answer is figuratively blowing in the wind, as dozens of people are dying each week due to a pandemic that is spread through the air. Like many artists, Bob Dylan spoke out about injustices throughout his career. What can we, as artists, do to bring attention to the suffering of those who cannot protect themselves from COVID? Are we missing-in-action? Have we abandoned a society that has failed to support us, when artists have been suffering themselves?

 

Theater artists on omicron: 'I'm tired of living through history'

Datebook: Allison Page was supposed to get one more chance to perform here. She’d given “two years’ notice,” she jokes, at her job as executive artistic director of sketch comedy company Killing My Lobster. Her long-planned move from Oakland to Nashville was set for April, and despite the pandemic and its constant uncertainty, postponements and disappointments, she’d lined up one last gig.

 

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