the week of august 3-7, 2020
not to mention any threat of hell (because we already live in it), but if you're smart you'll learn your lessons well
Welcome to Nothing for the Group, the newsletter where one dramaturg rounds up one week in theatre news, reviews, and takes.
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virtual theatre
Chicago-based performance collective Manual Cinema will stream past productions on a weekly rotating basis for the month of August. All four shows — Lula Del Ray, The End of TV, No Blue Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks, and Frankenstein — will be available for free.
BOLD, an organization that supports Black women in the performing arts, will present a virtual 10-minute play festival on August 14th, 21st, and 28th. The festival will feature new work written by Agyeiwaa Asante, Brittani Samuel, Chanel Carroll, Jazmine Stewart, Kristen Adele Calhoun, and Lakhiyia Hicks, with direction by Kristolyn Lloyd, Tavia Jefferson, and Bianca LaVerne Jones.
Rattlestick Playwrights Theater announced their August virtual programming, including a reading of Jiréh Breon Holder’s In The Southern Breeze, the monthly anti-racism discussion Witnessing Whiteness, and “Spotlight on Critics of Color,” with panelists Jose Solís, David John Chávez, Juan Michael Porter II, and Diep Tran.
My friend Heather said she would unsubscribe if I didn’t mention that the cast of Center Stage is reuniting for a virtual discussion, and her readership is very important to me, because I’m the best goddamn dancer in the American Ballet Academy.
assorted news
Well, that was a fun idea while it lasted: Barrington Stage is moving its previously announced, Equity-authorized indoor production of Harry Clarke outdoors, due to Massachusetts public health guidelines. (More on the Berkshires in a minute.)
Playwright Donja R. Love will spearhead Write It Out!, a new workshop specifically for writers who are living with HIV. The workshop is a program of the National Queer Theater, in partnership with The Lark, Mobilizing Our Brothers Initiative, and the Each-Other Project.
when wilt thou save the people? (not anytime soon, at least in the berkshires)
The NYT’s Michael Paulson reported on the extreme safety precautions of the Berkshire Theatre Group’s Equity outdoor production of Godspell, which opened last night in western Massachusetts.
Perhaps I’m living up to my reputation as a heartless killjoy, but I thought this article was impossibly sad. The kicker destroyed me:
“We’re risking our lives, but if this finishes and we don’t get sick, then whatever we’re doing is working,” [actor Nicholas Edwards] said. “Theater needs to be saved somehow.”
The article also quotes Equity president Kate Shindle, who called into the first rehearsal to tell the team, “Not to put any pressure on you, but the entire American theater is depending on you to be really smart…People are going to look to you to know that theater can happen without anybody getting sick.”
Forswear thy foolish ways: the American theatre doesn’t need to be saved by actors and designers and crew members being “really smart” a.k.a. risking their lives for a production of Godspell. Our industry is in crisis because of criminal government negligence, not a failure of theatrical innovation or individual action. I’m so incandescent with rage that we don’t have a better social safety net and worker protections so that everyone involved in this production could’ve stayed home instead of strapping on face shields and plunging themselves in a public health experiment because they need the weeks to qualify for their union health insurance.
Until June, I was working at a theatre with very intimate spaces. During early conversations about reducing capacity size to comply with social distancing guidelines, my first thought was, “How is it ever going to be financially viable to produce with only 45 audience members in the house?” The only answer is to increase already high ticket prices.
This is what’s happening at Berkshire Theatre Group: each ticket will cost $100. Outdoor performance venues in Massachusetts are allowed to admit only 100 people, including cast and crew, so audience size is capped at 75. (As an aside: it’s worth noting that Massachusetts currently has a 14.5% unemployment rate, one of the highest in the country.) But even with the exorbitant cost, I doubt it’ll cover the expense of the extra safety measures, regular COVID testing, PPE, and expected loss of income. (Berkshire Theatre Group normally produces in a 780-seat theater.) I’m just a lowly dramaturg with subpar budgeting skills, but the economics here don’t make sense to me.
So what exactly is the value of this craven “the show must go on” mentality? Who is the audience for theatre in the time of coronavirus? Who can afford the ticket price and the health risk to watch actors masquerade as de facto lab rats for LORT D minimum rates — and who actually wants to spend an evening doing that?
things I read & found compelling this week
Diep Tran on the need for radical honesty about salary transparency, income inequality, and the impossible math of eking out a living in the arts
Lyn Gardner on the future of the Edinburgh Fringe, and how leaders can address the festival’s inequalities, artist exploitation, employment practices, and unwieldy size post-pandemic
Josh Loar calling for a new labor movement for the performing arts industry, abolishing the current exclusionary practices and inhumane working conditions, and taking collective action to fight the coming austerity
That’s all for this week. In the before times, August was always a news-lite month — everyone’s on vacation, or starting rehearsals for their next season — and the tradition continues.
I’ve been house-sitting in northern Virginia for the last few days, so please meet my guest editors and canine wards Apollo and Sombra, who would like my attention now, right now, please.
It’s a miracle I wrote anything this week with these two Velcro dogs, so thanks as always to Rebecca Adelsheim for making sure these sentences were in English.