The Impact Of Covid-19 On Festivals And Theatres
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New York Musical Improv Festival postponed
This is the improv Chronicle podcast. I'm Lloydie. It's Tuesday 24th March 2020. Two weeks ago, I said our next episode would be about how teachers, theatre managers and those running festivals thought they might be impacted by the Corona virus. This is not the episode I expected to make. I'm sitting in Nottingham, England, and I'm not allowed to leave my apartment. Schools, shops, theatres they're shut,. Two weeks ago I was in New York where I’d been for a few weeks. That week I was being joined by teammates (from Nottingham improvised musical team Rhymes Against Humanity) who were coming out for the New York Musical Improv Festival. We did not have anything close to the experience we expected.We start what became a pretty personal journey, two weeks ago today.
Sitting in a New York diner on Monday, the ninth off March 2020 on DDE. In three days time, the new musical Improv Festival starts. I'm reading all these reports about Corona Virus is shutting down public events that talking about sporting events sitting across from a TJ Mannix, one of the two people behind the New York Musical Improv festival, How has this impacted you?.
Uh, you know, it's just what you want to have, uh, three days before your festival to have to have to deal with a a possible pandemic. So we are way that's we've spent this weekend doing, is is dealing with it, realizing that way, know that the number of Corona virus cases are gonna go up in the country because there haven't been any testing kits available. So the more kits that are available than where the numbers are gonna go up. We were just sending an email to everybody today to all the teams, saying We're following all the rules from the center Disease control and from the state of New York and from the Magnet, the Magnet Theater where the New York musical improv theater is happening. If something happens and we are told we can't do the festival way, don't have any control over that. But what we can do is tell everybody that we're looking out for them. They'll be a lot of hand sanitizer everywhere. No, the last people that are sick to not come to the festival. So we have a couple of people that have said that they're not going to attend, but everybody else is going and they're nervous that we're gonna cancel but our plan is to go forward with it.
Well, I just got off a subway train in New York. It is Thursday, the 12th of March 2020. Now on Dhe just found out around 5 p.m. The New York Musical Improv Festival is canceled. Closed magnet Theater on its had to be rescheduled. Uh oh. Got it is not the word. I got six other teammates who've flown across from the UK to New York to be a part of this festival. Uh, just that meeting now. Um wow. Yeah, I genuinely don’t know what we’re gonna do.
Well, things have moved fast. I'm in an Uber on the way to 54th Street with two of my teammates, Nicky and Jeanette, and, some of the other teammates or another Uber. Chicago group has booked a space of 50 seater on 54th Street on Dhe. They've kind of basically are putting on an alternative night to the festival. Now that it's not happening. I have no idea what this is gonna be like. Are you guys feeling good?
You just called it alternative. But actually, it's gorilla, which I think is far more exciting. An element of danger. And we feel that that really encapsulates what this whole thing has become.
The Festival it was not. But given the number of people gathering, it was well within the regulations set out by the New York authorities for gatherings. On that day, we had somewhere somewhere appropriate Legal. Where we could go was great. People got to perform and TJ and Robin, The two festival directors were there clearly heartbroken for the performers. TJ addressed the crowd
About 3 45 this afternoon. Way got word from the owners of the theater. And from that, everything had to shut down and we were ready to do anything to make it work. And I know you all were, too, because you're here.
Performers moved on to a nearby bar. I spoke to the performer who organized the impromptu evening.
My name is Drake Schrader, Um, live in Chicago from Houston, Texas. What you did tonight was incredible. How did it come about? Unfortunately, through terrible circumstances, we have been sort of waiting with the Corona virus stuff on a lot of cancellations in New York. We've been I'm sure everyone has been planning to be here for months before now. So we got here, holding onto the hope that the festival, when you canceled it gets canceled at like four o'clock today. 3 45 on. So we're all in a room together and teary eyed and about to, like, break down, not sure what to do. And I was just like, Let's do like guerrilla warfare. Let's let's you like you like Old Cradle Will Rock John Houseman and Orson Welles style like Let's do the show anyways, regardless wherever we are, We had a lot of family in town, so we called a bunch of theaters. Um, we got Schettler, uh, answered the phone and they were like, Someone is on the line right now, canceling a room with 50 people, 50 person capacity. And I was like, Don't don't hang up, Keep me on the line on. So I was able to book the room for, like, three or four hours, and I posted a post start. We started hitting up teams that we knew were gonna be here still and then I mean the support and show we had tonight. It was incredible. It was a real show of improvises coming together in spite of circumstances, and absolutely it's the best of the best part about, like, I don't want to say that this is This is ever better than anything else. But like it's making the most out of a situation that already was terrible feels it feels so good to be able to, like still do it. You know, people were glad to have the chance to get together.
We were still in pre locked down days. The guidance was primarily about washing hands, not shaking hands. Bars were still open. No one was being told not to go to them. So people got together and commiserated
My name's Isabella. I'm an improviser with Off Key Improv.
You had a fundraiser to get you guys here. So how are you feeling?
Well, it's been a chaotic day, you know. You wake up, you think you're doing a festival. Instead, there's a minor plague happening, and then you're not doing a vestibule anymore. It's OK. It's been a lot of talk of both, like sorrow, of missing things like enthusiasm of trying to pitch in and of like gentle law talk, being like Okay, how do we do this? Because we had a fund raiser. And how do we let people know that were kind of performing in the vessel of a kind of not And we're kind of here but kind of knocked on DDE. What is the implications about Dubi? Let people we have to let people know and give them the chance to take their donations back cause we're not technically performing in the festival. And then how does that affect us? And yeah, yeah, But then also, like being like, hey, folks who are donating to us to get here way, love and trust and they love and trust us, obviously, because they're really participating and helping us out. And so, like, will they want to question like, where is the connection between trust and giving him? What does it mean to give? Um yeah, and now we're stranded in New York. Maybe we'll find out it's fun.
But while the new your musical Improv festival was canceled in South Africa that same weekend, the Mama City Improv festival still went ahead. The situation was different in Cape Town, as festival organizer Eva Gilliam explained a few days before the festival started.
You know, we're like, Okay, we need to think about this? Is this something that we should be doing? Checked in with all the teachers checked in with the travel restrictions, that gun restrictions, everything still seem to be going ahead. Um, and so we decided to kind of go ahead all the tickets, that Rimbaud and everything was already in place. So we went for it, and we had a great festival. It was, You know, the Cape Town Festival is quite small, so an intimate we just kept it. We're trying to be keep a little distance with the elbows on the and the feet and have a lot of the teachers reworked their curriculums to any games that were very touching your intimate, like, have more space and not touch. And so, like a different kind of consensual scenario, you know? And in Cape Town, that stage there weren't any confirmed cases, right? There weren't any. I think there was one confirmed in the last two days of the festival. There was one confirmed somewhere. Cape Town. Um but it wasn't. It was kind of a rumor at that point. Like in the other parts of the country, Jo'burg has the first ones were in Durban. Like maybe at the very beginning of festival, You're in the position where?
But you were pretty much the last festival to get to happen before everything. Pretty much worldwide. Improv wise has completely stopped the last festival in the world. It s so you kind of closed down improv for us.
Well, I'd like to think that we put a nice big bow on it for later opening. Yeah, absolutely. On. I think that's what so many of us are looking forward to. I think the tough thing for a lot of event. Festival on theater Organizer's has bean. Sometimes the lack off clear guidelines from some governments. Um, yeah, I think in the UK, that was certainly an issue when people were told you probably shouldn't go to the theater, but theaters weren't closed. So do you close your theater in that circumstance, or what do you do when you're allowed to still be open? Well, there's, I mean, for the last week, the rule was no gatherings of more than 100 people. My festival was under 100 people, people every night. So I mean, we technically still could have gone on another week, but um it just that didn't make sense to us either. That there were 100 people are still 100 people, then they see 100 people, then they see 100 people. So I think, yeah, I think also, given our context here, South Africans were very aware that when it if it really starts to catch, um, it's gonna catch like wildfire because of the high density Ah, residential areas in Cape Town in Johannesburg. You know, the Yeah, just high density and and also a lot of illness due to HIV and TB in some communities, um, that are really struggle with even those basic health care, much less like needing emergency healthcare.
I got home from New York last week. The past weekend, I had to talk about the festival that I'm co artistic director off the Robin Hood to International Improv Festival, which was due to have its inaugural year this May. We knew what we had to do. We've had to move it now to May 2021. As heartbroken as I felt as I still feel, I know there are bigger things at stake here and that the hard work, that incredibly talented team has put into our festival well, that hard work still gonna bear fruit next year, but I won't pretend it's no hard because it really, really does suck. So what of other festival's coming up?
Hello? Hey, Andy. Hi. Andy McIntyre runs the Baltimore Improv Festival, which is due to run on July 27 through 2 August second this year. What kind of impact is this having on you both as ah community and also personally at the moment? I mean, I think right now I think for a lot of a lot of improvises, especially it's one of their big escapes is to be ableto you know, go. And you kind of shut the world out a little bit when you're doing improv, and that's a lot harder. Now, um, I know a few teams that I'm on. We've had, like, meet up some zoom and face time and other, you know, sort of meeting service is, uh, my dual partner, John Wynn Mueller. We did a show last week. I've been trying to make it as close to the show that we normally do when we perform and played around with the fact that you could do sort of fun backgrounds and zoom and use that to be the seven square show. So we've been trying to do things like that for the theater. I know with the Baltimore Improv Group, we're looking into ways to do online classes were having for people in the States were having an interesting problem. Workshop at 5 p.m. By P. M. Eastern Time US today. So, Hee, I don't know when this podcast is going out, but, um, you know what? You were trying everything. We're meeting with our teaching staff at the bottom improv group. We're meeting to try to find the ways we're testing out exercises that'll work in the group chat settings and sort of seeing what we can do to try to keep some level of income stream. And because I mean, obviously I'm in the entertainment field is is definitely one of the unfortunate casualties in all this that you know, there's not a feasible way toe safely, social distance and have live theater. So that's something that we're definitely dealing well, yeah, in the next episode, we're certainly going to be dealing with what people are going on to do on how people kind of rising to this unprecedented in quite peculiar challenge for people who are in the arts. I just wish you the best of luck with your festival. And no matter what happens, I hope you have a brilliant 14th year. No matter when you actually have your 14th year. Yeah, I hope we do, too. And I hope that all the Robin Hood Festival comes off successfully next year. You know, the first of the festival's always, I think, the toughest one. And then the second years, where you sort of fix all the mistakes he made the first year. It takes good, good, I think, three years to really sort of start getting into that group of how things are gonna work and all of that. So we have my friend John with Mueller, that is, he's my do a partner, and he is involved with Camp improv. Utopian stuff. You do the thing at Improv Utopia called the Tiny Improv Festival, and we have an online version that's on Facebook. So if you google the tiny Improv Festival online edition, it's a Facebook group for improvisers to try to get together and posts and share content so I think that would be That's a cool thing for people get involved in on DDE.
That seems to be a ray of light coming out of all this. If you want to still engage with improved your ing these new circumstances, there are opportunities as Eva explains.
That's making the Cape Town scene feel closer to the global improv world. I think you know one of the reasons we started the modesty and profess schools that were so isolated from everyone around the world, and it was an opportunity to bring teachers and get some input in improv and and grow it here. But what's come out of the virus or the lockdowns everywhere is that improv is taking to the Internet in a way like wildfire really, really fast, um, classes being available in this first week of block out in the UK, which means that we cannot participate from here in things that we couldn't just two weeks ago and which is why we needed a festival. So in a way, it's expanding our opportunities here in Cape Town and 100 1000% you know,
Next time on the Improv Chronicle podcast - The brave new improv world is online and people are getting everything from coaching through to quality performers from online platforms. At a time when freelance artists and teachers are losing their regular salary and where improv students and enthusiasts are losing their regular improv fix, what solutions does the internet provide?
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