The Show Must Go On
As a co-founder of an award winning off-off-Broadway theatre company, and a musician myself, I have particular empathy for what’s happened to the performing arts in NYC during COVID. I have many friends who make their living as actors, musicians, writers, directors and indeed the entire support eco-system that goes into producing great works of art. The Met Opera has laid off the entire orchestra and chorus indefinitely while the NY Philharmonic has cancelled performances until 2021. Indeed, anything involving an audience has been impacted. Social distancing rules makes it impossible to get around this. From big bands to small indie rock bands just starting out, this is devastating because they make their money performing and selling merch.
Let’s not forget off-off-Broadway, the incubators for emerging acting talent. A sprawling confederation of venues with 99 seats or fewer and the hundreds of groups that rent them for limited runs. The League of Independent Theater lists approximately 138 New York City operating venues, plus more than 40 non-traditional spaces (such as galleries or bars). The Indie Theater Fund has 546 member companies. These outfits, with shoestring budgets and loyal, niche audiences, are the most vulnerable in the current crisis.
For nonprofit institutions such as the Public, the Vineyard, Second Stage, the Signature, New York Theater Workshop, Here and Storm Theatre, where I started —we’ll see if furloughs, Payroll Protection Program (PPP) loans and the largesse of foundations and private donors keep them solvent until it’s time to emerge.
It’s easy to forget that all these talented artists make entertaining us, the audience easy. What we don’t see is the years of training, honing their craft, perfecting their art in front of an audience because they love what they do and thrive from us as much as we are nourished from them.
Let’s suppose for a minute that you hate the arts. All performing arts. “Why should I care?” you ask yourself. Fully embracing your inner Ebenezer Scrooge for a minute, let me attempt to explain why you should care. The performing arts contributes over $14 billion to New York City. That money pays the salaries of 97,000 people working in the performing arts, who in turn pay taxes that help provide services such as schools, water, trash, social services, police, firefighters, unemployment assistance, roads, bridges, airports. Those salaries then feed the local economy spending on food, clothes, dry cleaning, repairs, rent, bars, restaurants, shops, book stores, entertainment, where in turn those people also pay tax, and thus the virtuous cycle continues on. Without that and the performing arts to attract the tourists that also pay for hotels, food, bars, entertainment, taxis…stuff, we will have a VERY large hole in the city’s budget to fill. And when all those services and your favorite restaurants and shops you might take for granted slowly start to decline or disappear, then, if you’re still even in the city, you might care.
This little film is for them. They will see better days ahead, for all things must end and the phoenix will arise from the flames.
Filmed in Times Square, Lincoln Center, NYC and its surroundings in May while NYC was under New York State’s shutdown order during the COVID-19 pandemic. This is my short homage to all the performing arts and a document to longest shutdown in NYC’s performance history.
If you have ever enjoyed a Broadway musical, a night at the Opera, The New York Philharmonic on the Great Lawn of Central Park, rocked out to an indie band at Pianos, attended your annual holiday ballet production of The Nutcracker, or engrossed yourself in a thought provoking play off-off Broadway, laughed your ass off at Carolines or The Comedy Cellar, had a sing-along at a cabaret bar ….and you know you have….then please consider donating to any of the below emergency funds or a fund of your choice so that we may sustain these artists until we can see them perform again where they can once again enrich our lives.
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The arts are one of the key life bloods of NYC. Consider donating below to help support these artists.
