The COVID-19 pandemic has had a devastating blow on the performing arts, but a Brock University Dramatic Arts professor is encouraged by what she has seen from the industry.<\/p>\n
\u201cA vibrant industry went to ground over a matter of days, with theatres at first announcing cancelled or postponed productions and then, in most cases, cancelling the remainder of their winter-spring seasons,\u201d says Karen Fricker, Associate Professor of Dramatic Arts and theatre critic for the Toronto Star<\/em>. \u201cMost performing artists are precarious gig workers who are seeing current and future bookings evaporate.\u201d<\/p>\n In St. Catharines, arts organizations including the FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre, the Meridian Centre, Essential Collective Theatre and Carousel Players are among those that have cancelled or postponed programming through May.<\/p>\n The Stratford Festival has cancelled performances through to late May, and Niagara-on-the-Lake\u2019s Shaw Festival through June. While Shaw has not laid off workers and is conducting rehearsals online, Stratford has temporary laid off 470 employees, including actors, technicians and box office workers.<\/p>\n But Fricker sees hope among the gloomy news.<\/p>\n \u201cTheatre companies and artists have been demonstrating amazing resilience and ingenuity during this time of crisis,\u201d she says. \u201cA lot of activity has gone online.\u201d<\/p>\n Essential Collective Theatre is turning its annual vaudeville fundraiser into an online affair. \u201cQuarantine Cabaret\u201d will feature short video recordings of various acts, including singing, magic, clowning, drag and melodramatic readings, which will be livestreamed at the end of April.<\/p>\n Several Toronto-based companies are putting on telephone plays: one-on-one shows in which an audience member gets a hand-made personal story delivered to them over the phone, says Fricker.<\/p>\n \u201cDLT (DopoLavoro Teatrale), known to local audiences for their immersive shows including That Ugly Mess that Happened in St. Catharines<\/em>, is producing a series of phone and onlineperformances,\u201d says Fricker. Some of the performances are inspired by Boccacio\u2019s Decameron<\/em>, a 14th–<\/sup>century collection of novellas about a group of youth sheltering outside Florence to escape the Black Death.<\/p>\n \u201cI have been uplifted by engaging with online theatre over the past few weeks,\u201d Fricker says.<\/p>\n \u201cWatching theatre this way is not the same as sharing the same physical space and time with fellow audience members and the artists themselves, but that doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s a lesser experience. It\u2019s different, and theatres and audiences alike are adapting to what is, for now, the new normal.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The COVID-19 pandemic has had a devastating blow on the performing arts, but a Brock University Dramatic Arts professor is encouraged by what she has seen from the industry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":54097,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[37,4767,1,4],"tags":[8791,109,3166,7614,682,540],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65172"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65172"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65172\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65173,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65172\/revisions\/65173"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}