During this trying time, many have been making the belated observation that the services essential to our survival are provided by poorly paid people whose hard work usually goes unappreciated. We are learning in our isolation how much our mental health depends on the ready availability of the arts, which, while requiring considerable skill and training, are widely characterized as “non-essential,” especially when it comes to budget-cutting time.
At the tip of the pyramid of fine and performing artists teeter the tiny minority who have attained celebrity and wealth, and will likely weather the pandemic better than most. But the overwhelming majority of people who try to earn their living in the arts via what it’s now trendy to call the gig economy are barely getting by in the best of times. They have no financial cushion to fall back on, no pension, no health insurance.
When people can’t gather socially, gigs don’t happen. Aside from health considerations, we should all be worried about how artists are doing financially right now, and find ways to help them make it through the duration of this plague. If you’re watching hour upon hour of TV to get through this yourself, these “content providers” are important.
Artists are by definition inventive, creative thinkers. Right now they’re scrambling to find ways to use electronic media to enable audiences to connect with what they’re making. So are the curating and presenting organizations, often not-for-profit, whose business is to bring us artists’ works.
The visual arts
There has never been a better time than this to find a virtual tour of one of the world’s great museums. Sometimes this involves a video walkabout with an interpretive voiceover, and we’ll likely be seeing more of such in the weeks to come. On the local level, a number of Hudson Valley museums are making more of their collections, as well as exhibitions that are supposed to be open to the public at present, perusable on their websites.
Check out the online headquarters of the Woodstock Artists’ Association and Museum (WAAM). www.woodstockart.org/exhibitions will link you to views of “Otto Bierhals: A German-American Artist in Woodstock,” “Focus: Fish and Dish – A Fresh Take on Still Life,” “Eleni Smolen: Girl by the Sea/Guardians,” “Small Works” and “Onteora High School.” Other links on the site access WAAM’s past exhibitions, permanent collection, or even let you browse by artist.
Similarly, the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz is providing more than the usual access online at www.newpaltz.edu/museum to its spring-semester exhibitions: “Jan Sawka: The Place of Memory (The Memory of Place),” “Totally Dedicated: Leonard Contino, 1940-2016,” “Collecting Local: 12 of the Hudson Valley Artists Annual Purchase Award,” “War!” and “The Dorsky Collects: Selections from the Permanent Collection.” A virtual symposium on Sawka and his oeuvre will take the place of the live one scheduled for May 2.
The Unison Arts & Learning Center in New Paltz has had to close down its delightful sculpture garden, but a presentation by Riva Weinstein on her contributions to the “Sequential Exhibit: Composed to Decompose” exhibition scheduled to take place live at Unison’s March monthly potluck has now been transformed into a video tour, viewable at www.youtube.com/watch?v=uASZ2lyCFzk&feature=youtu.be. The multi-arts venue launched a music series called Unison Live-ish last weekend with a ticketed online concert by the great old-timey jazz and blues guitarist/singer Jim Kweskin. Expect to see more in that vein in the near future. And for parents who are now homeschooling – perhaps without ever having planned to do so – Unison is now offering online arts classes for kids, taught by Stephen Jacobs. You can sign them up for this virtual creative space at www.unisonarts.org/kids-classes/create-online.
Closed to visitors at least until mid-May, Opus 40 in Saugerties is rolling out a panoply of virtual offerings in various arts-related subjects called Opus-Online, which you can visit at https://opus40.org/events/opus-online-arts-culture-education-experiences. Besides videos with Wendy Hollender, whose stunning botanical art was supposed to be the focus of the April exhibition in the gallery in the Quarryman’s Museum, there’s a blog called The Quarantine Postings; a Stonewall Tutorial with Chris Layman on April 11; Online Toy Theater Workshops with Roberto Rossi on April 11, 18 and 25; virtual jazz drumming concerts with Roberto Juan Rodriguez on Mondays at 8 p.m.; wild fermentation demonstrations with Sandor Katz on Wednesdays at 3 p.m.; Restorative Contact for Quarantine Buddies workshops on Wednesdays at 7 p.m. and Saturdays at 4 p.m.; and recitations of poetry in Italian and English, recorded overlooking the Coliseum in Rome, on Fridays at 7 p.m.
Theater
Of all the arts that thrive on live human beings gathering in a common public space, theater and dance are the two arguably most severely impacted by the Covid 19 shutdowns. So many livelihoods depend on ephemeral performances, recreated night after night. Complicating matters even further during a pandemic is the physical proximity required onstage for rehearsals, even without an audience present.
Some classes can be taught online: The New Paltz-based Vanaver Caravan is offering dance instruction four times weekly via Zoom, for example, for a suggested donation of $10 to $20 per session; sign up at https://vanavercaravan.org/blog/onlineclasses. And of course, the thrill of dance performances can sometimes be captured on-camera. The Kaatsbaan Cultural Park for Dance in Tivoli has had to cancel its spring residencies, master classes and performances, but it’s keeping the flame alive by regularly posting videos of great dancers in motion at www.facebook.com/kaatsbaan.
While theater is never quite the same experience when you aren’t sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with other people caught up in the same emotional rollercoaster of the drama unfolding onstage, seeing great performances caught on film or video can still provide considerable satisfaction. Broadway and the professional theater scene in general have stepped up to the plate in a variety of ways. You may have heard that Andrew Lloyd Webber is allowing performances of all of his musicals to be livestreamed for free in 48-hour bursts beginning each Friday at 7 p.m., via a new YouTube channel called The Shows Must Go On: www.youtube.com/channel/UCdmPjhKMaXNNeCr1FjuMvag. You can watch a June 2019 Shakespeare in the Park performance of Much Ado about Nothing streamed for free, thanks to the Public Theater and WNET, at www.thirteen.org/programs/great-performances/much-ado-about-nothing-rahlxp. And National Theatre Live from London, whose filmed productions local audiences have been able to enjoy at various art moviehouses on a regular basis, has begun streaming free full-length plays every Thursday at www.youtube.com/user/ntdiscovertheatre.
Let’s have a look at some theatrical entities closer to home – the ones we really want to support during this difficult time: The Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival doesn’t know yet whether it’ll have to cancel all or part of its 2020 summer season at Boscobel in Garrison, but the casts of its planned productions are going ahead with their rehearsals via the magic of the Internet. You can catch a glimpse of Stephen Michael Spencer and Jennie Greenberry – playing Berowne and Rosaline, respectively, in a musical version of Love’s Labor’s Lost – singing “Where Are You Now?” at https://hvshakespeare.org/where-are-you-now-from-loves-labors-lost.
Heading northward, we find the Center for Performing Arts at Rhinebeck reviving shows from seasons past via tickets-only online access. Hamlet (from a 2009 production) is this week’s offering, at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, April 8, but you must sign up at https://centerforperformingarts.showare.com/eventperformances.asp?evt=363 by 5 p.m. to get access to the private weblink. The price is $5. Reportedly forthcoming are tapes of The Wizard of Oz, The Dresser, Rent, The Drowsy Chaperone, West Side Story, Falsettos, The Who’s Tommy, Rock of Ages, Cats, Peter Pan, 1776, Next to Normal and Hedwig & the Angry Inch. The Center is also offering free Jumpstart Your Writing classes with Louisa Luisi-Vilardi, the next one coming up at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, April 8, via Zoom. To register, e-mail kevin@centerforperformingarts.org.
Another local stage venue that was forced to cancel its spring season was the Bridge Street Theatre in Catskill. While hoping for a reboot by the end of May, its principals are offering fans access to an archival video of the company’s 2015 production of The Epic of Gilgamesh for home viewing, at www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeGinzmuDEs.
Bard College, known as a hotbed of innovative approaches to performance, offers as one of its interdisciplinary concentrations a program in Global Public Health, which includes a couple of courses in epidemiology. So, we shouldn’t be too surprised at its getting ahead of the Covid 19 curve that the rest of us are trying to flatten by staying home. Already the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts has launched a new virtual stage called Upstreaming, which mixes new content, including digital commissions, with archival performances such as Bard SummerScape opera productions. New content is added each Wednesday at https://fishercenter.bard.edu/upstreaming.
The first live webcast, set for this Saturday, April 10, will feature Caryl Churchill’s Mad Forest, produced by the Bard Undergraduate Theater & Performance Program. And Neil Gaiman’s interview with Hugo Award-winning author N. K. Jemisin, originally scheduled as a live conversation in the Fisher Center, will go on instead via livestream on Saturday, May 2.
Film
Will movie theaters survive the Covid-19 crisis? Already they were feeling the pinch of competition from the enormous expansion of choices made available in the past decade or so via multitudes of cable TV channels and Internet streaming services. And younger generations of moviegoers are more apt to organize their homes around entertainment centers than did those of us old enough to remember the Golden Age of Hollywood.
When this period of self-isolation is over, will we decide that we’ve gotten used to this cushy lounger in our own living room and this big home screen that we can put on pause for a bathroom or snack break anytime we want? Or will we find ourselves craving the shared experience of sitting in a crowded cinema on opening weekend of some highly anticipated film?
For the sake of the cinematheques in our own region, let’s hope that some of the old magic of going to the movies as an excuse for a night out won’t rub off entirely. It’s fortunate that, of all the kinetic artforms, film is the one that translates most readily to the home screen.
The art cinemas in the mid-Hudson are taking steps to keep regular customers in the habit of looking to them for their fix of cerebral, independent and foreign movie fare. By offering online links to films they would’ve put up on the big screen this month, and charging a fee comparable to the normal price of a movie ticket, they’re trying to keep themselves afloat while reminding us of the cultural services that they provide our communities.
Upstate Films has instituted a Virtual Screening Room program, typically charging $12 for whole-family access for periods ranging from 48 to 72 hours. (Streaming platforms vary, so some offerings will be viewable on smart TVs, others only on PCs, phones or tablets.) Titles currently available are And Then We Danced, Corpus Christi, Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and the Band and The Whistlers. Visit www.upstatefilms.org/virtual-screening-room for tickets.
Two of these films, The Whistlers and Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and the Band, are also available via the Rosendale Theatre’s new Virtual Cinema program, also for $12, along with Slay the Dragon, rentable for $6.99. Visit www.rosendaletheatre.org for links to the movies.
Another local choice is “The Moviehouse @ Your House,” available through the Moviehouse in Millerton at http://themoviehouse.net/index.php/site/showtimes#st_np_s1. Currently on the roster are The Whistlers, Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and the Band, And Then We Danced, Sorry We Missed You, Fantastic Fungi and Saint Frances. Prices range from $4.99 to $12 and viewing windows from 48 hours to 30 days.
Shadowland Stages in Ellenville doesn’t have live theater right now, of course, but it’s keeping the spirit of its silver screen series alive via links on its Facebook page, www.facebook.com/39093233821/posts/10157650054418822, to classic movies on Vimeo. Currently featured is Orson Welles’ The Stranger, and Howard Hawks’ His Girl Friday becomes available at 7 p.m. this Friday, April 10.
What’s in store for the 21st annual Woodstock Film Festival, scheduled for September 30 to October 4, 2020? Surely we’ll be able to congregate again by then! For a true movie buff, there’s really no substitute for the frisson of being part of the crowd at a premiere. But we’re now getting into the months when WFF typically hosts lots of lead-in events, some of them fundraisers for the festival itself. As a substitute, Meira Blaustein has announced two online series: Alternative Projections delivers short and full-length films, curated by WFF staff, programmers and industry friends, that can be streamed for free at https://woodstockfilmfestival.org/alternative-projections.
Available titles include The Neighbors’ Window, An Exquisite Task, Pittari and Fantaisie in Bubblewrap. The Virtual Films & Conversations series highlights films by festival alumni and allows audience members to join the online conversation with such filmmakers as Bill Horberg (Lars and the Real Girl), Peter Saraf (A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood) and Michael Barry (Stuck).
Bardavon & UPAC
While they don’t really fit under these categories, being primarily music venues, the Bardavon 1869 Opera House in Poughkeepsie and the Ulster Performing Arts Center in Kingston are still selling tickets for events scheduled for the second half of 2020, with the July 12 Frankie Valli concert at UPAC currently projected as a plausible time to return to business-as-usual. The Bardavon Facebook page at www.facebook.com/bardavon1869operahouse has initiated a series of what are being called Ghost Light Minutes, after the little bare bulbs that have long been used to keep performers and stagehands from falling or colliding when the stage lights are turned off. It’s a tradition, even a superstition, that a ghost light must be left lit even after all the cast and crew have gone home for the night.
So far, the Bardavon hasn’t been posting full archival videos of past events held in the two theaters. But some of the Ghost Light Minutes feature links to performances by venue regulars, most recently including a streaming concert from his home studio, Fur Peace Ranch, by Jorma Kaukonen. Other postings include reminiscences in the form of photos, memorabilia or brief video interview clips. Keeping a few little flickering flames alive can push back a whole lot of oppressive darkness in these difficult times, reminding us that concerts, plays, dances and screenings will one day be back in our beloved community music halls.
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