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Please Yield To Oncoming Road Boxes Before Proceeding To Dance On Stage

August 3, 2020

by:

Joe Patti

I had a post today on ArtsHacker with the click-baity title, You Can’t Just Let People Tear Your Clothes Off Anymore. The post talks about the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) reopening guideline which were released last month.

Since I have been reading and writing about different guidelines, as well as reviewing our state governor’s orders, I didn’t feel like there was anything unexpected or onerous proposed in the first half of their document.

As I write in the ArtsHacker article, if your organization interacts with IATSE personnel, it is helpful to know what their expectations will be when you work with them. I also thought it would be useful for organizations that hadn’t formulated human resource policies regarding “…training, testing, reporting, quarantine length and leave policies, the guide provides a good framework for creating them, including some information on paid leave laws in the U.S. and Quebec.”

Where I thought the guide is most valuable is in the second half where it applies all the standard best practices that are general knowledge to some of the specific activities associated with putting on a performance. This can be especially true for touring performances. When you are operating out of a different physical space every night or so, there is always a bit of reinvention required. When that is complicated by the need to take care to limit exposure to a virus, the level of attention to detail required increases many times over, especially when you are actively participating in a live performance experience.

It is no longer acceptable to rush up to a mirror, apply make-up and discard kleenex and cotton balls with the intention of cleaning it up later. At the very least, you have to hand it off to someone wearing gloves or holding a trashbag. As the title of the ArtsHacker post suggests, even having wardrobe personnel standing by in the wings to pull off one set of clothes and help you don another set needs to be planned and executed with even greater discipline than usual.

Given the restricted space of many theater backstages and the pauses in movement of personnel and equipment throughout a space required by Covid-19 guidelines, I anticipate a not insubstantial amount of time will be required to effect the load-in and load-out process. This may mean tours will need to scale back the amount of equipment they travel with, add more days between performances, or travel shorter distances between event dates. This may translate into fewer cities being included in a tour due to time constraints or the economics of needing to pay more personnel for longer hours.

You Can’t Just Let People Tear Your Clothes Off Anymore

Arts Facilities, Working In The Arts

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200 Years Later, Still Looking For Concert Sponsors

July 29, 2020

by:

Joe Patti

From the “more things change, the more things stay the same,” whose life do you think this describes?

….she is particularly sharp-eyed, and refreshing, on the practicalities that shape any artist’s life. How to make a living is a priority. “Reference is made throughout this book to the sums [deleted] earned,” reads the first introductory note. “He was strapped for cash,” she observes baldly, in those or similar words, more than once. How to find a venue, how to get a score published, how many rehearsals can be squeezed in (usually only one, leading to some disastrous premieres), how much tickets should cost, how to wheedle rich sponsors into donating, how to deal with the uncomfortable business of self-promotion: all make the difference between food on the table or hunger, performance or silence. Ask any composer working today. The issues have not changed.

This is from a review in The Guardian of Laura Tumbridge’s Beethoven: A Life in Nine Pieces.

If you are interested, the reviewer, Fiona Maddocks, enjoyed the book which focuses on the composer through the lens of nine of his works. As a result, the book is a relatively short 288 pages.

It may be a good candidate as an introductory book for people who might be simultaneously interested and intimidated by the prospect of learning about classical music and composers. It appears Tumbridge really humanizes Beethoven, discussing the complaints neighbors had about loud music and shouting coming from his apartment as well as the composer’s resentment that Napoleon’s invasion of Vienna was putting a cramp on the city’s party scene. Not to mention that French occupation of Vienna apparently suppressed attendance of an early version of his opera, Fidelio.

Art(ist) Education, creativity, Working In The Arts

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Choose Wisely

July 29, 2020

by:

Joe Patti

I have had a little bit of survey fatigue so I haven’t been keeping up with Colleen Dilenschneider’s ongoing updates on audiences willingness to return to cultural organizations. As a result, I didn’t catch her post last week on the growing importance people are placing on mandatory face masks until recently.

What I felt was a more important reading of her post is that the conditions under which people will feel confident about returning to cultural organizations is increasingly more within the control of the organizations themselves. In particular I base this on the fact that availability of a vaccine has dropped from the most important factor in April to the fifth most important factor. Face masks didn’t appear as a response on their surveys until about six weeks later in May. It started in the top three and as of last week, was the top factor. (my emphasis)

Or perhaps people are simply accepting that returning to normal activities might mean learning how to safely live alongside the virus for a time. The creation, approval, and distribution of a vaccine resulting in herd immunity may be many more months, or a year or longer away. This reality may be why masks now top the chart compared to the availability of a vaccine.

There has also been a dramatic decline in the percentage of people reporting that the government lifting restrictions means that conditions are safe to return to pre-pandemic behaviors…Now it’s seventh… and may still be decreasing.

As of this month, your organization’s own decision to be open is a bigger factor contributing to feeling safe than the government lifting restrictions. This is a big deal, but it’s not surprising. Cultural organizations are trusted entities at the same time that trust in the federal government is low. Many organizations closed before they were mandated to do so in an effort to flatten the curve. A notable 34% of likely visitors trust that you’ve duly considered safety and accordingly revised operations when making your decision to reopen.

If nothing else, these results emphasize the importance of regularly communicating with your community and generating a well-considered plan for an audience experience.

Audience Relations, Leadership, Marketing/PR, State of the Arts

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You’re Invited To My Pool For A Concert

July 27, 2020

by:

Joe Patti

I am sure a lot of people are wondering what other people are doing about performances as you plan for the day you can actually start again. Classicfm.com shared a number of images and videos of the way different venues have been spacing both musicians and audiences.

To me the most novel idea and location was a cello concert at the bottom of an empty pool in Germany. Are the acoustics of a pool conducive to the cello range? There is another article with more pictures from other angles. The lane markers made for good spacing guides and the grade of the floor as it moved toward the shallow end helped with sightlines.

In Hong Kong, they had plexiglass between orchestra members, but in The Netherlands, they had empty seats and dividers to separate audience members.

There are a number of pictures of people arrayed in seating at social distance which may strike many as a bit depressing given the appearance of sparse attendance.

One image I found very striking was that of the London Mozart Players performing in a church. While there was no audience because they were video taping, when I saw all the musicians wearing vibrant red facemasks and bits of red clothing, my first thought was that they really made it work even spaced apart. Granted, some of that is due to good audio and video editing and the ability to zoom in close to the musicians, but for most of the video it is pretty clear everyone is spaced further apart than usual.