Artists in Quarantine: 4 artists share their survival plans

The damage that the current pandemic has had on theatre artists is nigh unfathomable. The very artform relies on gatherings, and the presence of others. No theatre has gone unaffected, and the life blood of those theatres, its technicians, designers, administrators, directors and performers, are left with heartbreaking cancellations, and worrisome losses of income.

View the DMV Virtual Tip Jar to learn how to send money directly to artists through their Venmo and PayPal accounts.

But one hallmark of artists is their resilience, and almost every artist has committed to continuing making art to share with the community, with many actors, directors, and designers exploring digital and streaming means for the first time.  With such an unprecedented national crisis, they continue to prove why the arts are vital to any society. I shared some phone calls with celebrated designer and playwright Deb Sevigny, Jordan Friend, Artistic Director of 4615 Theatre and freelance artists, actors, and educators Dylan Arredondo and Acacia Danielson. These four were the first that came to mind when it came to producing digital content in their disciplines.

How has the coronavirus pandemic affected you?

Deb Sevigny (she): So I’m an educator at George Mason, and after about a week of figuring out what we’re gonna do (we were on spring break when it all started coming up). We had faculty meetings about what to do, I was Zooming in from Arkansas. We started getting online more and more. We took an extended spring break on how to pull classes online, and now I start teaching tomorrow. It’s immediate and there are thousands of professors trying to do it, many for the first time. I’m running hard by instinct and flying by the seat of my pants. That’s been the biggest impact. As all the conferences and shows get cancelled, we’re connecting in new ways. The social stigma of getting in touch with strangers? A little bit of that layer has been stripped away as people are desperate for interaction and knowledge sharing, especially in the educational arena.

Jordan (he): For me, personally, all of my sources of income are freelance and gig based. My income has been stopped. Substitute teaching, master classes, guest classes, playing music in bars, giving private voice lessons (although I’m working on restarting that via Skype), and gig-by-gig pay on my Lockdown Jukebox, so I’m figuring it out. I’m lucky in that I’ve got places I can stay; I’m living with my family right now, and I have some money put away. Living with my family has also been really important in having a support network. I’ve also pulled in some decent amount from the livestream shows, which I can put towards essential expenses.

Acacia Danielson (she): The normal theatre rhythms are all being cancelled. I haven’t seen my family in about 6 months, and now I’m not able to see them. This is a global, national, and local situation that affects every area of our lives. As artists we’re used to having tenuous income, but all of the backup ways we’ve learned to make money are also at risk. All those freelance day jobs that are usually stable are not available.

Dylan Arredondo (he): Two acting contracts closed early. Two contracts, which I was in the process for, have been cancelled. There are promises of remounts next season, but there’s only so much time next season. Two contracts closed indefinitely.

I work in museums and teach in schools, and as an actor. Museums, schools, and extra curricular teachers aren’t getting paid for most of the courses they’ve designed. Same with acting contracts; some companies are looking out and paying their actors, but it’s tougher at the non-union level than at the equity houses.

How has it affected your arts career?

Deb: I personally was at the end of my season, with the exception of the Pointless Show happening in July (The Legend of Hang Tua), that I’m costuming and unofficially dramaturging. Hopefully that happens. But for the rest of my season, I was working on Easy Women Smoking Cigarettes at Signature which ended early, and The Curious Incident of Dog in the Night at Arkansas Rep, which is the same production that happened at Round House, got cancelled early. I was set designer for Mason’s Men in Boats and it will now probably not happen. It was the culmination project for many students, directed by Mimsi Janis. We were supposed to be teching this weekend. My calendar has been completely upended, but I haven’t lost income, about which I feel really fortunate.

Jordan:  We had to close a world premier of Renee Calarco’s Museum 2040, two weeks early. Our initial remount plans are definitely up in the air. We can plan for a remount, but everything is still in a state of “wait and see.”

This puts a lot of our forward planning into chaos. We’re gonna hold off for now, until we have a better picture of what the world is going to look like. We’ll have a season of content one way or another, but I’m studying the tea leaves, as it were, to figure out what it will be. I’m in the drawing board phase on how we can turn these pivots into our advantage, and how we can stay innovative and creative. We will have to be shapeshifters in one form or another over the next year. I don’t know what that looks like, but I’m giving myself permission to give myself the time to figure out what our voice will be in the New World.

I was planning to take a week or two off for rest or recuperation anyway. So while I feel a rush to feel like I need to be a person who arrives at the next big idea, I feel the need to also rest regardless of what’s going on in the world.

If playwrights want to submit scripts to us, we’re looking at doing more streaming Zoom readings in the interest of new play development. Our first,for This Body Is a Fragile Thing, premiered Monday night on #QuarantineTheatre. Everyone’s talking about how this is a great opportunity for people to write and create, but getting people to hear their work out loud and getting feedback from audiences is a very important part of new work. We were already looking at creating platforms for new work development, so this seems like a logical step for people who want to hear their work out loud.

Acacia, Tell me about Pandemic Theatre

Acacia: Pandemic Theatre

Pandemic Theatre is me just putting up some smaller than 5 minute videos with me, and my stuffed animal co-host, Wotan Bear (Like the norse god, featured in Wagner’s Ring Cycle). Wotan or I interpret a monologue, a poem, a short passage from literature. There are some costume elements and strange props. I don’t try to put too much planning into it. I’m a classically trained actor, and I coach voice, text, dialogue, etc, so it’s a fun chance to make fun of something I love very much and make fun of myself and the pretension we can often bring to classical text. It hardly counts as work. I’m calling it “low-quality classical chaos”. Really it’s just an attempt to bring a little joy and silliness into our lives.

Deb, can you talk to me about the drawing classes you’ve been doing online?

I really believe that we all have the ability to draw, but we don’t have time and it’s not a comfortable part of our lives.  For me, the meditative act of drawing every day is something I don’t get to do a lot, so I just started saying: “I’m gonna do this. I’m gonna test out my camera so I know how to do this for classes. I get over my nerves of being on camera. I’m just gonna do these drawings. At first I will draw an amabie, a Japanese mythological creature that staves off pandemic.” Then I realized that people were drawing along and sharing them! I’m delighted!  I’m totally delighted by the whole concept. I’m still doing it on Draw With Deb

Dylan, Tell me about your Quarantine Choreo Chain Letter Project?

Dylan: Mitchell Rose is a dance film director, and I was familiar with his piece Exquisite Corps, which was an exquisite corps dance film pieced together with some of the world’s most well known choreographers for the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2016. There was a second video in 2017. So I was familiar with his dance-film.

What inspired you to make the first one?

Dylan: Because of the feeling of hopelessness. How do I combat this hopelessness within me? One of the most helpful tools I had was my body. I’m spending so much time in my head; I’m overthinking so many things. It’s a cause of great anxiety for me. By totally getting out of my head, I can start to reconnect with certain loci of emotion, places where I tend to contain joy. It started with me dancing around a bit, and I thought “Oh we would all benefit from this reminder.” so right off the bat I was interested.

Are there plans to make more? 

Dylan: So far I’ve collaborated with about 25 movers, and about 25 more movers have reached out and expressed interest in participating. I think there will be a few more videos in this series. My hope is that each one of these videos is a seed in some way that can attract interest so that these collages can grow. Maybe there’s the opportunity to compensate these artists.

Let’s say we’re in quarantine for the next 8 months. What happens to the art we make? We have to re-conceive how we make theatre. That starts with the questions of method of interactivity beyond the shared space. Exploring this, and compensating artists, takes money. So hopefully these generate interest and a magic funder comes along and provides a means for us to continue making art.

Quarantine Movement Letter #1
Quarantine Movement Letter #2

Deb, tell us about the mask making project.

Deb: Elizabeth Richard Bailey, whom I’m not sure what she’s doing currently, but I knew her back from the Catalyst Theatre days. She reached out to me, her daughter-in-law works with the babies at Inova fairfax. They haven’t completely run out of supplies, they were told that they’re not sure when they’re going to get another shipment of Personal Protection Equipment (PPE). This gives panic to the medical professionals. Elizabeth got in touch with me, and said: “This is a need.” I really want to get involved, but I’m reading so many sources about masks and what not…so she shared some materials about what we need for these five-micron filters. I designed and am testing a prototype that can hopefully be mass-produced. I’m of the opinion that any mask is better than no mask right now to supplement what they’re currently using. Sara Cormeny will be spearheading a pod of people in DC in the mask-making effort. It changes every minute.

I started a Google form that people can fill out who want to help. It’s everything from pre-washing to cutting and sewing; so you don’t need high sewing skills. I’m looking for people of all abilities to help. I have skills that are useful for a time like this, and it would be a disservice not to use them.

I’m very privileged to know so many amazing artists in my circle of friends and colleagues. If you know anyone who would like any artists doing interesting work in the Quaran-times, please share! When we spread art,we spread joy, and we can find that little bit of connectivity in these times of social isolation.