Art PatronsTake an Intermission During COVID-19
In the face of an ever-growing pandemic, American citizens have seen the closure of most public entertainment and tourist venues for the foreseeable future. A good majority of restaurants in South Florida closed their dining rooms up until recently, but have since begun closing again due to a surge in COVID-19 cases.
Public theaters and museums have also taken a hit from the required closure of these public places. Being that both facilities entail people sitting or standing in close proximity to one another, they are especially unable to function with the looming threat of incubating the COVID-19 virus. Public live theaters have stood empty, and museum art pieces are collecting dust on their pedestals. However, even worse off are the people who once operated these now-closed facilities.
The Perez Art Museum in Miami closed temporarily at the beginning of March during the first wave of the virus. They continued to pay their employees for a short amount of time before the furloughs began, and those who only received a furlough were lucky. Others were outright fired or laid off. Esteban Ascencio, 23, was one of the lucky ones. Even so, he’s still worried about what’s in store for him once it reopens.
“Once the museum does open up again, we’re expecting a significant dip in attendance numbers,” Ascencio said in an interview. “This would mainly have to do with the fact that a serious portion of our visitors were international tourists namely from South America, Europe, and China.” It has also been speculated that it will be quite a while before the general public feels safe enough to travel not just out of the state or country, but even their own homes. They won’t be likely to visit a museum when the threat of a virus is still present.
“Even though my job is guaranteed once the museum reopens, I worry that I may end up being let go thereafter since the tourism industry may take a while to fully recover from the pandemic,” Ascencio said.
A little bit north near the West Palm Beach area, FAU alumni Amber Mandic, 23, has also faced job insecurity. She works as a company manager for the MNM Theater Company, and due to COVID-19, the company’s slated shows have been postponed. According to the MNM Theater company website, their feature show Cabaret was supposed to open on May 15th and run through the 30th. There is currently no new set date, as the course of the virus still remains too uncertain for them to start performing.
“When things began to get rocky in March we began wondering if we were going to cancel our May show, a production of Cabaret at the Kravis Center because we did not know if we could put our actors into a room to rehearse in April,” Mandic commented in a phone interview. “In March we were contacted by the Kravis letting us know that they would be canceling both our May show and our production of Bye Bye Birdie all the way in August.” The next scheduled show after those two was supposed to take place in November, which would mark a year since the company’s last performance. But, they are unsure if they will be able to run this show either, and won’t know for sure until August.
The company was also raising money to produce their shows by building sets for other companies and other traveling shows. According to Mandic, they were supposed to help build sets for the Florida Renaissance Festival, but it was canceled during its final few weeks, and they were unable to do so.
Not all was bad for Mandic, though. Unlike most others in the community, she still receives some pay. “We have a wonderful producer who decided that she would not let us go and we would weather the storm as a team,” she said. “We began online programming and initiatives that have done well, and we made the decision just over a month ago to start working for half pay to make our money last longer since we have no money coming in right now.”
Mandic considers herself extremely lucky, as most theater workers make ends meet by hopping from show to show and getting paid by the varying companies that hire them. This is not to say that Mandic hasn’t had some shortcomings in this sense herself, but her place at MNM Theater Company keeps her with some income.
“I have lost three paying shows to the virus, but I still have a paycheck,” she said.
Up at the West Chester University of Pennsylvania, musical theater student Juliana Yasson, 21, has also faced some shortcomings in regards to her education. With most classes moving online, Yasson found herself in a tough spot, as she was taking both a stage makeup class and a directing class; both of which, she felt, almost required in-person lessons for the curriculum.
“I was taking a…directing class in which the final involved me directing a one-act show that was written by another student the semester before. When classes went online, I almost considered dropping the class. How are you supposed to take a directing course online?” Yasson said in a phone interview. She persevered nonetheless, but all they could do was have online discussions regarding their respective plays, and take notes on what they could have done with their pieces. While she’s glad she didn’t lose out on anything major, she was disappointed to have lost the opportunity to direct a piece she was looking forward to working with.
Yasson still feels hopeful of what’s to come despite this. Although Broadway will most likely remain closed until 2021, and Yasson herself knows many people personally who are affected by this, and other closures in the theater community, this hit to her fellow actors and artists have produced some new means of showcasing their talents.
“I’ve seen some wonderful collaborations with choirs, casts, and others just sharing their art,” she said. “It will always hurt that so much was lost, but we have always learned to adapt and I feel like the theater community is one of the strongest in the world and we will work through this together.”
