the week of november 2-6, 2020
i'm just as surprised as you that there's theatre news this week
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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the grim future of the American theatre
Actor and professor Rosie Brownlow-Calkin conducted a survey of Equity-affiliated theatres, asking how COVID and its attendant economic spiral have impacted their company’s financial health, and published her results in American Theatre.
Her findings — drawn from 60 companies in 27 states and DC, with operating budgets ranging from under $200,000 a year to nearly $90 million — are stark. Here are some key takeaways, but I recommend reading the full article, which includes extremely distressing pie charts:
While some companies have actually seen their coffers swell in the past six months, almost a third of the 60 companies surveyed will be forced to consider closure some time in 2021 if restrictions on gatherings persist, without additional government support.
Another six companies anticipate needing to close in 2022 or 2023 given these same conditions, and seven are unsure if closure will be necessary in the near future—as one company succinctly put it: “??” Only 23 out of 60 are confident that they will not need to close before the pandemic runs its course.
The companies also predict additional rounds of staffing and budget cuts:
In an effort to stay afloat, most companies have already instituted drastic cost-saving measures….half of all companies who responded to the survey have already furloughed staff or cut pay, and 24 out of 60 have laid off at least one employee. There is significant overlap here; one quarter have both laid off staff and handed down furloughs or pay cuts.
20 companies anticipate future layoffs or furloughs if the situation does not change. Three responses went further, suggesting that their organizations might need to “vastly restructure”—become a host venue, perhaps, and cease producing themselves—in an attempt to avoid closure.
The theatres that don’t foresee closures tend to fall into three categories:
Companies with endowments and healthy cash reserves that were in good financial health pre-pandemic and did not recently take on significant financial risk or burden (i.e., purchasing or renovating a new space)
Companies tied to universities that have pledged their continued support
Companies that have little to no overhead. Theatres in [this] category tend to be theatres operating on a shoestring budget or on a seasonal basis.
virtual theatre
Singular British comedian/storyteller Daniel Kitson’s Dot. Dot. Dot is touring empty theatres around the UK, and streaming live for an online audience. In Kitson’s own words: “Daniel Kitson presents his account of six ridiculous and devastating months, experienced largely from a safe distance, almost immediately misremembered and retold here so inaccurately as to be, very nearly fictional.”
James Ijames’ What Is Left, Burns starts streaming on November 11th. The 20-minute Steppenwolf production, directed by Whitney White, is about “two men wading through the connection they once had as they struggle with the desires that still bind them.”
The McCarter and Round House released more details about their jointly produced four-week virtual Adrienne Kennedy Festival. Four of Kennedy’s plays — He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box (Nicole Watson, dir.), Sleep Deprivation Chamber (Raymond Caldwell, dir.), Ohio State Murders (Valerie Curtis-Newton, dir.), and the world premiere of Etta and Ella on the Upper West Side (Timothy Douglas, dir.) — will be produced as virtual theatrical experiences each week from November 14 to December 12. The plays will be available on demand through February 2021.
You’ve got one more day to catch the “noirish tautness” of Tinuke Craig’s production of Sarah Kane’s Crave, which is streaming at the Chichester Festival Theatre.
New York Theatre Workshop announced the dates of its upcoming virtual productions of Theater Mitu’s </remnant> (November 16-24) and the Dominican Artists Collective’s The Cooking Project (November 18-December 15)
Chelsea Marcantel’s Citizen Detective at the Geffen Playhouse — an interactive show based on an unsolved 1920s Hollywood murder, where audience members become the sleuths in a case that mixes theater, mystery, and collaborative code-breaking — is sold out through December 20th, but you can sign up to be notified about additional showtimes and returned tickets.
meanwhile, in london
The UK entered a month-long lockdown yesterday, halting theatres’ plans to reopen with socially distanced productions. Several companies, including the National Theatre, and multiple West End venues, canceled or postponed current and upcoming productions.
2021 season updates
Philadelphia’s Arden Theatre Company announced a 2021 digital season. The virtual line-up includes a cabaret series, a radio drama adaptation of Kash Goins’ 74 Seconds…To Judgment: A Radio Play (Amina Robinson, dir.), and Nilaja Sun’s No Child (Justin Jain, dir.).
things I read this week (when I wasn’t refreshing for election results)
Helen Shaw talking with Jeremy O. Harris on his “weird-art slush fund” courtesy of HBO, and how it funded the recent viral hits Circle Jerk and Heroes of the Fourth Turning
Diep Tran’s piece on the work of Be an Arts Hero, the challenges of arts lobbying, and how the pandemic has revealed the sharp class divides in the theatre ecosystem
That’s all for this (very long) election week. Here’s hoping we can all get a little rest this weekend (especially Steve Kornacki) because our work’s just starting.