Boise’s arts groups feel pandemic pain. Idaho Shakespeare opening is up in the air
Just before the reality of the coronavirus hit Idaho, an audience of about 70 people gathered for Ballet Idaho’s first dress rehearsal for its spring program “Light/Dark.” Dancers’ family members, company supporters and fellow artists were in attendance, including legendary American choreographer Lar Lubovitch, who came to see the company do one of his works.
“These are uncertain times,” Ballet Idaho Artistic Director Garrett Anderson began. “And this is when we need art the most.”
Everything was on the line that night of March 12. Fears about the coronavirus had been building for about a week, and anxiety hung heavy in the Morrison Center hall as the dancers took the stage. No one knew what was going to happen, but just in case, Anderson hired FrontRunner Films to capture the two dress rehearsals.
That night the Ballet Idaho company gave a dazzling performance of a rich and varied contemporary work — a program a larger audience would not get a chance to see. The next day, the company elected to cancel its two performances that weekend in the interest of public health and safety.
(Ballet Idaho ticket holders and season subscribers will be able to see the film beginning 7:30 p.m. Friday, April 3, through the evening of Sunday, April 5. If you want to see it click below and make a donation in any amount. You’ll receive an email with the film’s link.)
That same weekend, Broadway theaters went dark. Alley Repertory, which performs at the Visual Arts Collective in Garden City, shut down its production of “A Funny Thing Happened on the way to the Gynecologic Oncology Unit at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center of New York City” after an opening-night performance.
One week later, Boise Contemporary Theater followed suit, ending its production of “Every Brilliant Thing,” but committing to pay the cast and crew through the last week of the run. The Boise Philharmonic canceled the remainder of its 2019-20 season, and Opera Idaho pushed its production of Jake Heggie’s “Dead Man Walking” into the next season.
The Morrison Center has been dark since March 13; all of its employees, including executive director Laura Kendall, are working from home. The Boise Art Museum, Discovery Center of Idaho and Idaho State Museum closed their doors.
For now, Boise’s and Idaho’s arts industry — along with performing and visual arts businesses, musicians and other members of this community across the globe — is shut down.
The arts economy is often off the radar of most economic forecasts, but that doesn’t mean it’s not significant. In direct employment, the arts is a $139 million business annually in Idaho — about half of that is concentrated in the Treasure Valley — and $877 billion nationally, according to Michael Faison, executive director of the Idaho Commission on the Arts, who cited Americans for the Arts data.
“When you multiply what the state has to the hospitality sector (restaurants, hotels, parking, etc.), it goes up to $2 billion for Idaho,” said Faison.
‘Unprecedented’
There have been trying financial times for the arts in the past few decades — 9/11 and the Great Recession — but nothing like this, Faison said.
“I’m worried for them, more than during the recession. Business is stopped cold, no revenues coming in, and they have fixed costs. Now, we’re in an unprecedented cash flow crisis. This is a real test,” he said from his office last week.
There is a relief package coming that includes funds for arts groups nationally, he said. The NYC Covid-19 Response & Impact Fund launched last week with $75 million to support arts groups in New York City, such as the Bronx Art Museum, according to a story in The Washington Post.
The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act offers a $75 million lifeline to arts organizations across the country. Groups will be able to apply for federal grants, without the hurdles that normally accompany them, such as needing to raise matching funds and targeting a specific project, the National Endowment for the Arts announced in a press release.
How groups will apply and how funds will be dispersed will be announced at a later date, the release said.
Benjamin Burdick, BCT’s producing artistic director, was quoted in the Post article: “It’s not just a show that got canceled. People’s lives got canceled.”
Ghost lights on
In theater there is a tradition of a ghost light, a single bulb left on when the theater goes dark. This image, which is happening in theaters around the globe, including in Boise, is a symbol for BCT, Burdick said on his last day of working from the empty building.
“It is somber and surreal to think this will be the new normal for the immediate future,” he wrote to supporters in an email.
It started like a snowball rolling down a hill. Besides canceling the last week of “Every Brilliant Thing,” Burdick also postponed the company’s production of “The Show on the Roof,” an original musical by Tom Ford and Alex Syiek. The artists and theater already invested two years in creating it. Burdick, Ford and Syiek are working to include it in the 2020-21 season, or to find some other way for the production to happen, but that is still a complicated endeavor.
Ballet Idaho decided to postpone its May performances of “Beauty and the Beast” and “Carnival of the Animals,” possibly until next season, while committing to pay its company of 25 dancers and its staff for the remainder of their 2020 contracts. That puts an extra burden on the company, which is experiencing a dramatic loss of revenue.
Right now, Burdick said his focus is on how to keep his staff employed and keep the company afloat. BCT is in a little better position than some groups because the company owns the building it occupies, and “we’ve been smart about expenses this year,” he said. “My goal is to keep everyone working.
“I’m confident that community support for BCT will get us through. We’ve got this incredible staff that’s small but mighty and is committed to making this place the best it can be. I hope that we’ll come out the other side OK.”
Cancel, postpone, reschedule?
When the coronavirus fallout started, it took a few days to realize the enormity of the situation, said Laura Kendall, executive director of the Morrison Center for the Performing Arts, the main venue for Boise’s arts companies, presenter of touring musicals with Broadway in Boise, and more.
It’s not just the local groups. National acts and tours have postponed, rescheduled or canceled.
“It felt like we were in quicksand,” Kendall said. “We don’t know how long it’s going to last, and we’re all interconnected. We had to pull marketing, and that’s hurting the media.”
She’s trying to help the local groups as much as possible, she says.
For Ballet Idaho, Kendall canceled the contract so the company didn’t have to pay for the week of rehearsals in the theater and the two days of filming.
Kendall said that right now, she isn’t looking past May. Even though there are events that are still listed for sale on the Morrison Center website, nothing is for sure, she said. There’s a lot that is out of her control.
“We’re hopeful and also realistic,” Kendall said. “Everything can change and we’re watching what’s happening across the country.”
So what now?
Many of Boise’s arts leaders worked through 9/11 and the recession. But this is palpably different, said Charlie Fee, producing artistic director for the Idaho Shakespeare Festival and its sister companies, Great Lakes Theater in Cleveland and The Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival.
“The economic downturn was catastrophic in a different way, because our ability to produce theater didn’t stop,” Fee said. “We could still produce our work, and as everyone now is realizing is that so many of us — and our friends in the service sector — we are in the same boat because your income stops because you simply can’t do your work.”
So instead, Fee is taking a breath and a focusing on creating his plan — several plans, actually.
“The news on every front is daunting,” he said from his Boise home. “It’s overwhelming and it’s terrifying, and there’s a low level of panic, but in the meantime we try to bolster each other.”
Fee’s production of “Much Ado About Nothing” was closed in Cleveland after its first full run-through — all of its preproduction costs already spent. The show is slated to open ISF’s Boise season on May 22. He also canceled the Cleveland rehearsal and run of the musical “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” which is currently scheduled for early June in Boise, followed by a run in Lake Tahoe.
The actors and stage crew, as employees and members of performance arts unions, can file for unemployment, as can directors and designers, who work on contract.
“This is just brutal on the gig economy,” Fee said.
This is a complicated problem with a complex solution and a lot of moving parts, he said. And there is no final answer. But Fee said one good thing about being in the theater is “we’re really good at improvising.”
“Our hope is that we can still open on schedule, but May 22 looks hard,” he said, because of transporting actors to Boise and factoring in rehearsal time.
“Do we postpone? Maybe. Fortunately, because of our structure of three theaters, we have a diversified portfolio,” Fee said. “I can save a show and use it in the next city and not lose all the production value.”
The most important message Fee wants to get out is that his No. 1 priority is to protect the health and safety of his artists and the public.
“The bottom line is we’re going to take care of our audience,” he said. “We’ve been in existence for a long time, and no one is going to lose a ticket.”
This story was originally published April 3, 2020 at 4:41 PM.
