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Compiled by Patrick Blenkarn, Milton Lim, Laurel Green
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DateContextAuthorTitleArguments/QuotesLinkTranslation
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20 Jul CanadaMaggs, DavidArt, After Virus: Seven Questions for a Sector on the Edgehttps://thephilanthropist.ca/2020/07/art-after-virus-seven-questions-for-a-sector-on-the-edge/?fbclid=IwAR0iBDIrjV9aXW4jJFXNXdUaWVbB2TAscHzXOkXyXFehSUHF0bv2ICn8Ixs
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14 Jul CanadaBanff CentreDear Artistic Communityhttps://www.banffcentre.ca/articles/dear-artist?fbclid=IwAR23-isDzEbNdUJg2VnCqrw6gLDCd8ihMMz4KWyOpNs70xN49uWVraoRXy8
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3 Jul AustraliaSpatz, ZoharHow can we reimagine the arts post-Covid when we're all so bone-achingly tired?https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2020/jun/03/how-can-we-reimagine-the-arts-post-covid-when-were-all-so-bone-achingly-tired?fbclid=IwAR00k411-EfxLa_285TbePfbGDeBAibqwtyggX_f2dSmv5LFd6qdxvCcZyk
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1 Jul USASchwabksy, BarryWhat Are Art Galleries For?https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/future-of-galleries/
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1 Jul USA, PhiladelphiaPaulson, MichaelThis Theater Plans Dividers to Keep Patrons Socially Distancedhttps://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/01/theater/wilma-theater-social-distancing.html?fbclid=IwAR35tljINOcxN9D_EfyMWTv6IaSHFGdHn-Cpxqh4-giJee_liMCNfdNVC78
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26 Jun USAHallgarten, JoeAll that is solid melts into Zoom: five thoughts on cultural education in a COVID-shaped world"Your DIY guide to writing a COVID-19 opinion piece:
If there’s one thing that Covid-19 has proved, it is that I was right.
If there’s one thing that lockdown is showing, it’s that I am both humble and resilient, and that the thing I do is needed more than ever.
Although I don’t quite understand the science, I’m pretty sure the science will prove my thing to be true.
If there is one thing that government should prioritise at the moment, it’s my thing.
If there is one good thing that might come out of the crisis, it’s that good thing I’ve always wanted to happen.
Throw in a self-deprecating anecdote about your home life; pepper your opinions with some curve-flattening metaphors; and above all, act like you’re really, really sure.

"my question is whether is there anything about this crisis that has made you question or doubt any of your evidence, beliefs or hypotheses?"		https://culturallearningalliance.org.uk/all-that-is-solid-melts-into-zoom-five-thoughts-on-cultural-education-in-a-covid-shaped-world/
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17 Jun UKBrown, Mark and Lanre BakareUK theatre faces ruin amid coronavirus crisis, say top cultural figureshttps://www.theguardian.com/stage/2020/jun/17/cultural-catastrophe-uk-theatre-faces-ruin-amid-coronavirus-crisis?CMP=fb_gu&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR29xeq0eW6Enw2GpjkRn5HvJygAS5FIert72xZGNwQ1E1ZdBo9FCJxM4sI#Echobox=1592411114
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16 Jun CanadaMcKibbon, EmilyMore Than Welcomehttps://canadianart.ca/essays/more-than-welcome/?fbclid=IwAR0SOuu2zg9Jt2OdI_ICKhi8uz6KWEBqQUOCFXSlqUYuvIq7thFegRU5HmA
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15 Jun CanadaHerman, LawrenceWhen the pandemic subsides, preserving the arts must be a top priority for governmentshttps://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/article-when-the-pandemic-subsides-preserving-the-arts-must-be-a-top-priority/
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9 Jun CanadaMaga, CarlyU.S.-based online box office missed payments to Canadian theatre companies hit by COVID-19https://www.thestar.com/news/investigations/2020/06/09/us-based-online-box-office-missed-payments-to-canadian-theatre-companies-hit-by-covid-19.html?fbclid=IwAR3UyTrjT-lSaftM-SSoR9jOsM97bWntpcTX6SvHpJnR7JY8tRO3UdbQ9QU
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4 Jun CanadaVerjee, ZainubWill the COVID-19 crisis prod us to truly embrace a Canadian culture that gives agency to artists?https://www.straight.com/news/zainub-verjee-will-covid-19-crisis-prod-us-to-truly-embrace-a-canadian-culture-that-gives?fbclid=IwAR0Rr6TCNcPKPj6y2r7bMX41WArmSo7wAJetxADoLza68rDRHQ3DSlkpigM
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4 Jun UK / EnglandMendes, SamSam Mendes: how we can save our theatreshttps://www.ft.com/content/643b7228-a3ef-11ea-92e2-cbd9b7e28ee6?fbclid=IwAR2wnYqVFzVo7W2-sxlbJmcsPiA3yQZ2olcEdbBdBRbJJtujpkfMKDP3S9w&segmentid=acee4131-99c2-09d3-a635-873e61754ec6
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27 May Canada / VancouverJenkins, Meagan and
Catherine de Montreuil		Artists Against Precarityhttps://canadianart.ca/interviews/artists-against-precarity/?fbclid=IwAR0SBz4Tcbe4k_JsqIsBsbSkN9sHR43Dyl8asNdJ0cNTUaRQJ3IVJAUfoBM
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25 May Canada / VancouverDerdeyn, StuartCOVID-19: The state of B.C. arts as creative as everhttps://vancouversun.com/entertainment/covid-19-the-state-of-b-c-arts-as-creative-as-ever/?fbclid=IwAR1bZ38XwL3CYmEbFQ_dl5oidkESclzNc46oPOPNBUKKauobmdD-H1ck4kQ
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22 May USA / New YorkMarino, Peter MichaelI Don’t Want to Watch Your Online Theater Showhttps://medium.com/@petermichaelmarino/i-dont-want-to-watch-your-online-theater-show-b41907d5c819
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22 May UK / EnglandBrian LoganWhat even is theatre now?': the fringe artists left out in the cold"It’s like the seven stages of grief,” says Paula Varjack, of the way Covid-19 has affected the world of theatre. 'grieving for your livelihood – for your whole vanishing industry – isn’t simply a process. “It’s a cycle,” she says."

"70% of the industry’s workforce is self-employed. Many are now left with no earning power and no institutional support.In its place, there is at least solidarity."

"...artist Haley McGee whose 14-Day Creative Quarantine Challenge is an online programme for artists seeking to stay creative during lockdown. It’s been so successful – more than 1,100 people have signed up – that McGee has had to automate the service"

"Then there’s the concern that digital – and the effects of the lockdown more widely – privilege the well-resourced and entrench elitism. To make and distribute digital theatre successfully, it helps to have resources, staff, an archive of recorded performance and an established audience. And then: how on earth do you monetise it?"

"But then, freelance artists have always been taken for granted. If there’s a positive right now, it’s that the exploitation and insecurity has become impossible to ignore...Maybe [this] “something new” can be a revolution in how the industry treats its freelancers. "		https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2020/may/22/what-even-is-theatre-now-the-fringe-artists-left-out-in-the-cold-covid-19
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19 May USAMcNulty, Charles25 top theater minds dream the future: What will the post-pandemic stage look like?https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2020-05-19/coronavirus-reopening-theater-future?fbclid=IwAR26tg8xZrNbCgC6BEz5UjeeqMPBLH-2uQ3lXs9y1MvmI7mtRNlycWUQ5k4
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19 May Canada / Toronto / Stratfordted witzelWhere the Wars of Self-Definition are Fought"Curating canons is inherently based on a process of exclusion and is often done using metrics of “excellence” and “significance” that tend to have supremacy ideologies baked into them."

"Making space for R&D and learning generated through new relationships is a means of integrating evolution into your basic assumptions.Until something like a pandemic obliterates all of those assumptions, and turns R&D into a basic state of survival."

"We needed to broaden and diversify the audiences who could make meaning by participating in these institutions, while generating holistic approaches to process that empowered all artists to do their best work."

"We have an opportunity to rebuild the sector with deliberateness and care. I wonder how we will define ourselves collectively: Who will “we” have become?...What will be the cultural inheritance of the world to come? How will we gather around it as makers and as audiences? In this time of physical isolation, projecting towards those possible futures is what’s getting me through."

Editorial Comment: This is the introduction to a HowlRound series sharing out the work of The Lab which helping the Stratford Festival reach beyond the limits of its traditional mandate—the Western canon - by curating a series of artists to explore a body of work from their own cultural inheritance. A two-part prompt: “What texts and projects can you bring that (a) are ambitious in scale and scope, and (b) you could imagine being performed in mixed company?” These prompts were generated with an eye to Stratford’s own producing structures. See article for in-depth description of process.
https://howlround.com/where-wars-self-definition-are-fought
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18 May USA
Alexandra Schwartz / The New Yorker
The First Great Original Play of Quarantine"a simple, satisfying formula for making theatre in the age of the lockdown. Choose a classic text— preferably not too long, preferably funny—get good actors to perform it into their devices, and voilà."https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/05/18/the-first-great-original-play-of-quarantine
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18 May UK / EnglandHiggins, CharlotteAfter the war, the arts came back stronger. They can do so again now"In England, every available penny of Arts Council money has been directed into emergency funds to keep arts organisations alive until September, and the furlough scheme is a lifeline; but some are already disintegrating. Nuffield Southampton Theatre called in the administrators on 6 May. After a decade of austerity, there is absolutely no fat in the British system."

"Socially distant theatre is a financial nonstarter. An auditorium with audiences spaced at two metres means playing to a house about 10-15% full; but most theatres need 60-90% to survive. As for the performers, it is hard to imagine socially distant ballet, or an orchestra spread thinly enough to make players safe."

"What theatres are meant to be is places where people sit together at close quarters, breathing the same air, sharing the same experience. And that’s how they make their money."

"The British arts after the pandemic may need to be rawer, more basic, more plugged into their communities than ever. And that might not be a bad thing."

"in purely practical terms, the war was the last time cultural organisations ground entirely to a halt. Robert Skidelsky’s biography of John Maynard Keynes notes that the economist liked to say he used the calm of war to reflect on the turmoil of peace. That reflection led to an entirely new settlement for the arts in Britain – the foundation of the Arts Council of Great Britain, forged from a sense that arts and culture were a way of providing healing and comfort to all of society after a national trauma. This was done in the same political breath as the foundation of the NHS."		https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/18/war-arts-stronger-covid-19-devastated-theatres-museums-imagination?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
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16 May CanadaWong, JessicaThe puzzle that we all need to solve': Canada's theatre community ponders comeback amid COVID-19https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/covid-theatres-how-to-reopen-1.5565999?fbclid=IwAR1SjYIYDIYBgWMbAA5JRyy0gScJt7PtLMKp5LCQ-dDWZnLtFoo0nXFZ-j8
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14 May USASalville, AliceWhat could socially distanced theatre look like?http://exeuntmagazine.com/features/socially-distanced-theatre-look-like/?fbclid=IwAR1rVADnloaLPDHwnh0ieIUJUbJ9PIiqdtJddRsXNd8U7osNUxw7ziiKppI
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14 May USADavidson, JustinWhat Socially Distanced Live Performance Might Look Likehttps://www.vulture.com/2020/05/what-socially-distanced-live-performance-might-look-like.html?utm_source=tw&utm_campaign=vulture&utm_medium=s1&fbclid=IwAR15aN1NHNTcy5MgQMkN8mSeEqGx0APpxyzqTwAWOW55XvkYhryBzPw-xiQ
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11 May CanadaBrault, Simon and Janet SmithCanada Council head Simon Brault talks emergency funding, the need for innovation, and areas of concern in the age of COVIDhttps://www.straight.com/arts/canada-council-chair-simon-brault-talks-emergency-funding-need-for-innovation-and-areas-of
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11 May Canada / QCGravel, FrédérickAfter or Now? "Quite simply, we cannot do what we love to do.
We can't do what we know how to do.
And to a certain extent, we don't know how to be this new being, this other being, especially since we don't really want to become that half-person."

"I don't miss overproduction. I don't miss feeling pressured to constantly produce new works. I don't miss the fact that almost all my colleagues in the cultural sector are overextended and rarely find the time to think of bigger dreams, of going further, of being more creative, instead of spending time and energy filling out grant applications."

"There will be a resurgence, a recovery.
But already the dialectic of crisis is taking shape.
With the same reflexes, the same ideological priorities.
Saying that we will be poor, that it will be a period of reconstruction.
There will be enormous pressure to desire less, to not aim too high.

LG has PDF
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8 May Europe/North AmericaSalas, CarmenWhat should we expect from art in the next few years/decades? And what is art, anyway?https://medium.com/@CarmenSP/what-should-we-expect-from-art-in-the-next-few-years-decades-and-what-is-art-anyway-be9f75c3d1ae
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8 May Canada / TorontoParry, EvalynIt's Going to Take Time"It already felt like 100 years had passed since the day we closed Buddies...What is TIME?”

"I started a list: Questions for COVID-19...an attempt to locate myself, to track my own thoughts".

"It’s interesting to me that we talk about theatre “seasons” although we aren’t really talking about something that’s connected to the rhythms of the natural world, like “peach season”. What about a “fallow” year? A time where we allow the soil to rest, to replenish the nutrients? Where we creatively focus inward instead of outward, cultivate the soil rather than produce?"

"Can I actually just take this moment to be present and not try to turn it into anything?"		https://buddiesinbadtimes.com/blog/its-going-to-take-time/
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7 May Canada / QCBoard of the CQTCeci n'est pas du théâtre"Chaque secteur exige une expertise qui lui est propre."

"Chaque démarche artistique se doit de demeurer radicalement libre.. C’est justement cette liberté que nous réclamons aujourd’hui : celle de rester fidèles aux arts vivants."

"Sans la rencontre directe avec le public, le théâtre n’est pas."		https://cqt.ca/covid19/info/1320https://tableaudhote.ca/this-is-not-theatre/?fbclid=IwAR2cCAWpceOKw5giEMhUeG8cMtJPCfMqTfv-Zv5K6AOe4o7IEHXJwIrjPCU
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6 May CanadaSheppard, LouPan/demic (All/People)https://canadianart.ca/essays/pan-demic-all-people/
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29 Apr USAChan, PaulLetter to Young Artists During a Global Pandemic"a dehumanizing notion of home is being promoted by the most barbaric voices in American life. “We must go back to the way things were as soon as possible,” these voices declare. “The economy must reopen immediately. Businesses must business again. Workers must work again.”... The meaning of home here speaks to the demand that we must return to how they were most at home with us—as the help, so to speak—for the house they think they rightfully own."

"The practice of working artists at whatever station in life is, at best, uncertain and precarious. There is no recipe for making good work. But generally, artists learn to recast their lot to suit how they need to express what it means to be someone. Making art is also where artists learn that aesthetics offers more nourishment than mere taste-making, if the practice of making work is treated like an adventure."

"How we think about what we’re doing changes how we do it, and ends up reshaping us in the mix."

"I feel I’m never quite the same after making what ends up mattering most. This is why I find pleasure in the notion that art is a form of self-expression only if the self is as dynamic and surprising as the expression itself."

"I came to tell you that what is new in art is a reminder of what is worth renewing in life. And that what is new in art, and what is worth renewing in life, may depend on cultivating an aesthetic sensibility capable of recasting what troubles us into a plot that is pleasing or interesting enough to warrant our undivided focus and participation."

Editorial Comment: Chan uses the notion of returning home from The Odyssey and the Greek concept of kleos (renown by rumour) to reflect on the ways that heros are changed in the process of going home. Similar notions underpin the history of the literary adventure (Chan cites philosopher Giorgio Agamben). The goal is always the self-transformation of the protagonist, never actually achieving an object (such as a sword).		https://4columns.org/chan-paul/letter-to-young-artists-during-a-global-pandemic?fbclid=IwAR1fT9CXA6Em8XwrMIahnB9NCJw-ptXLY3w8yCBi_KlSQB-dEoOIRMaB3R0
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27 Apr Canada / NSSchwarz, KenI am not a digital artist. I feel like a cobbler in a world of people who no longer wear shoes'Implies that theatre can't happen online. It can only happen in physical space when people are gathered.

"Without the audience members present, the broadcasts would be inert, hollow rehearsals awaiting an audience."		https://www.cbc.ca/arts/i-am-not-a-digital-artist-i-feel-like-a-cobbler-in-a-world-of-people-who-no-longer-wear-shoes-1.5544660
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23 Apr CanadaHaiven, MaxNo Artists Left Alive"...many calls to support artists specifically, in the absence of universal provisioning and a radical reimagination of value, risk once again making the image of the artist (as opposed to artists in their many actualities) a pawn in the machinations of capital’s reproduction."

"If artists make common cause with others, we might be able to preserve and extend these, and so abolish capitalism as such."

"I’m curious what else might emerge if we, collectively, directed our critical acumen, our creative energies, our social talents, and our collaborative dispositions towards supporting the creation of and the fight for a new post-capitalist economy?"

"the financialization of the capitalist economy is based on processes that don’t simply suppress or thwart creativity and the imagination but actively seek to excite and harness it, and that “contemporary art” is in some senses a laboratory for these methods."

"what will become of contemporary art’s thus-far constitutive claims to a hostility (or at least an inhospitality) towards capitalism when it is explicitly (rather than implicitly) put to work towards that system’s rescue and restoration?"

"Art may get some bailouts precisely so that it can continue to produce nice things for the resurgent financial elite, who would otherwise be content to let artists die, like blithe aristocrats feasting during a famine."

"Artists should in this moment be joining radical and ungovernable movements to demand, at very least that the emergency responses of the pandemic, which removed the economic coercion of capital, be extended widely and forever: basic incomes, rent suspensions, free high quality public services, the nationalization of critical infrastructure, and more."

"No one should be an artist as a “job” or get paid to do it, either by public funds or in a private market. Instead, we should (and we can) abolish “work” and “jobs” as such, by which I mean labour coerced by a relation to wage."

"[artists'] survival and success within a suicidal, revanchist capitalist system is pointless."		http://artsoftheworkingclass.org/text/no-artist-left-alive?fbclid=IwAR3-uSi-oXQiLWbTHp7zfUlCjUx1bx-WxZXv0gFJfjbTgZDcLDHJ-_GVs3c
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21 Apr USAViñas, NoelleLoving Theatre in the Time of COVID-19: A Playwright's Responsehttps://howlround.com/loving-theatre-time-covid-19
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19 Apr CanadaBrault, SimonQuelle relance pour le secteur des arts ?https://www.lapresse.ca/debats/opinions/202004/18/01-5269957-quelle-relance-pour-le-secteur-des-arts-.php
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19 Apr CanadaLouise BeaudoinCOVID-19 : d’ici le déconfinement et la découverte d’un vaccin, il faut réinventer la culturehttps://ici.radio-canada.ca/premiere/emissions/dessine-moi-un-dimanche/segments/entrevue/166007/frulla-beaudoin-milieu-culturel-coronavirus
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18 Apr Canada / WinnipegWe Quit TheatreThe Forgotten Art of Disassembly"When we think about what theatre is going to look like when “all of this is over,” maybe our goal shouldn’t be to better prepare ourselves for the next crisis, but to recognize that there already was one."

"Berger’s essay, which is addressed to socially-distanced theatre artists writ large, describes only those who are safe and in need of nothing beyond distraction."

"But theatre’s dependence on physical proximity, its demand for a silent, still audience, its disregard for the physical, emotional, and financial needs of its artists, and the rigidity of its training has shut out all but a small, exclusive group of both artists and patrons. Exclusivity can be confused for virtuosity. "

"Maybe learning how theatre can function online is an opportunity to make our community, practices, and performances more accessible; but if are going to learn how to do this, we are going to have to learn from the artists who have always been making work online: artists with disabilities, sex workers, people working in small towns, teenagers, people without BFAs, any artists who aren’t safe or welcome in expensive, exclusive theatre spaces for any reason. Berger longs for assembly as it was; we long for assembly as it could be."		https://tinyletter.com/WeQuitTheatre/letters/the-forgotten-art-of-disassembly?fbclid=IwAR3qMuwn-WS1m2nlYWq-46TTBOe4QtgG3iCpUrAekk_FmPJz9B6uP_ZcYRI
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17 Apr CanadaBrault, SimonCulture’s way out of this crisishttps://canadacouncil.ca/spotlight/2020/04/cultures-way-out-of-this-crisis
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3 Apr USABerger, NicholasThe Forgotten Art of Assembly"The singular transcendence of human congregation is irreplaceable. So why are we trying so hard to make theatre without it?"

"It is my love for theatre that cringes when I see it inch closer and closer to becoming a TikTok."

"The burden shouldn’t be on the artists to keep dancing like court jesters trying to earn enough money to scrape by when their stage has been stolen from them."

"We’re ignoring the one defining quality of our field, its liveness."

"Theatre makers don’t need to provide a supply of art that there isn’t a demand for. Let’s use this time to engage with the world not as artists, but as audience members, consuming a medium different from our own."

"We come to the theatre to see a part of ourselves reflected back, to feel seen, to recognize that we exist in a community."		https://medium.com/@nicholasberger/the-forgotten-art-of-assembly-a94e164edf0f
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2 Apr CanadaBrault, SimonArts and culture in times of solitude and solidarityhttps://canadacouncil.ca/spotlight/2020/04/cultures-way-out-of-this-crisis
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26 Mar CanadaSandals, LeahHow Arts Funding Is Being Affected by COVID-19https://canadianart.ca/news/how-arts-funding-is-being-affected-by-covid-19/
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17 Mar CanadaBrault, SimonPutting People First: COVID-19 and the Canada Council for the Artshttps://canadacouncil.ca/spotlight/2020/03/covid-19
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13 Mar Canada / BCKim Senklip HarveyLive Theatre Cancelled -- Program Policy Updates and Create Artist Ethics Statements"Yo theatre companies! Maybe now is the time to do an organizational review of your strat plan and update your policies and procedures."

"Stop...wasting everyone's time with a week of panicking...which only contributes to a frenetic and ineffective workplace environment [when we] can harness this opportunity, double down and get canadian theatre's very unstable procedural foundation steadied."

"So let's all take the day off :P and do some deep work, listening and thinking on how we can mobilize a inter-National theatrical movement to invest into our organizational and ethical performances. Because if there is one thing we know in theatre, a performance of any kind that isn't rooted, clarified, specific, well thought through and embodied, it's always a disaster."

Editorial summary: Things to do while live theatre is cancelled (instead of panicking): Organizations: 1. review anti-racist & harrasment policies 2. rehaul organizational capacity 3. offer racialized artists the chance to consult with your team. 4. revist mission, vision and values statements. Independent Artists: 1. do your taxes 2. create your website 3. write your ethical artistic values statement.

"If organizations are asked to put their mission and mandates on grants, I think we as independent artists have to hold ourselves accountable to a similar standard."		https://www.kimsenklipharvey.com/post/live-theatre-cancelled-program-policy-updates-and-create-artist-ethics-statements
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