The Performing Arts in a Troubled Time

ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

The news about the performing arts is sobering when not dire. Across the country – no, make that across the world – theatres, orchestras, and dance companies are shutting down, some temporarily, some indefinitely, some permanently. With the needs of millions of people in our country and across the world prioritized by circumstances down to the very basic human needs of food, shelter, and health, the arts are taking second place, and along with the arts, tragically the people who make he arts.

From many artist friends and acquaintances we hear stories of sacrifice, of radical rethinking of what they do and how they do it and why they do it and even of if they should do it. Thankfully many of these artists are coming up with survival initiatives: musicians are self-producing CD’s and marketing them themselves and arranging on-line performances of new work, perhaps predicting what the new normal will be for the foreseeable future.

Performing artists – among the most challenged by the limitations imposed by social distancing and mask wearing – have come up with ingeniously-conceived one-person performances and on-line mountings of mid-sized plays and dance pieces in which the performers act and react to images of fellow artists miles away on a screen achieving ensemble coordination in spite of physical distancing . Orchestras have assembled small ensembles from among their ranks for on-line performances of the symphonic repertory downsized in orchestration for obvious reasons. 

Hopefully this write up will provoke interest, elicit support, and foster generosity among arts lovers by reminding them – even if this is preaching to the choir – that the arts are as essential to us humans as food and health and shelter are, even in and perhaps more so now, in the bleak times in which we live.

Rafael de Acha http://www.RafaelMusicNotes.com

Published by ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

Rafael de Acha has enjoyed a distinguished career in the arts as a performer, stage director, producer, and educator. He was born and grew up in Cuba. At the age of 17 he moved to the United States to study Drama at the University of Minnesota, and later Languages at L.A. City College, Music at the Juilliard School of Music, at the University of Cincinnati’s College Conservatory of Music, and at the New England Conservatory of Music, from which he received the Master's degree. He has taught courses on the History of Music at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music and at Florida International University, and contributed writings and reviews to Seen and Heard International (www.seenandheard-international.com ) and to this blog. He co-founded the award-winning New Theatre in Coral Gables, Florida, where he produced and staged twenty seasons of classical and contemporary theater, including fifty world premieres of plays that went on to have international and national productions on and off Broadway, including Ana in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz (Pulitzer Prize for Drama 2002 and Tony Nomination 2003.) In 2006 he was presented with a citation from The Dade County Cultural Affairs Council for “trailblazing contributions to the arts in South Florida.”