The Edge of a Rainstorm: A Necessary Conversation About Arts & Entertainment for the CC Community

 A couple of weeks ago, something unusual happened.

I stepped outside to walk my dogs. As they lingered in one particular spot for an extended sniffing session, it began to rain.

Then I noticed something strange. Half of my shirt – like an almost perfect split down the middle - had visible wet spots from the rain. The other half? Bone dry.

It was raining on the left. It wasn’t on the right.

I was standing on the edge of a rainstorm.

Up until that point in my life, rain had been a binary condition. Either it was raining, or it wasn’t.

So it felt surreal to stand in a place and time where the paradigm had changed, and both were simultaneously true.

I’m finding myself standing on the edge of a rainstorm a lot these days, stuck between two extremes.

I detest what has become of our social media platforms and acknowledge they cause harm.

And I recognize our right and our need to stand our digital ground in the virtual communities where we gather for support and connection; many depend on it for survival.

I hate some people for the shitty things they’ve done.

And I still love them for who they are.

I acknowledge we’re living through societal collapse and it’s already so much worse than many of us can wrap our heads around.

And I still push myself to find joy and hope in each day.

I’m grateful to share that I found an overabundance of joy and hope this past week at the Inspire Performing Arts Festival by and for the Airborne Aware.

The festival was born of the efforts of a small team of us Covid-Conscious folks. We had an overwhelmingly positive response, from both the performing artists and the CC community members that attended.

We also heard from a couple of folks in the audience with questions about the performers.

“I saw pics of them performing in public online, and they were unmasked! How can they do that? Why aren’t they posting masked selfies? Shouldn’t they be proud to be CC?”

They’re fair questions. Our community has been let down many times by people we believed were our allies. We understood the artists we invited to the lineup to be Covid Conscious in both practice and messaging, but also recognized their mitigations might not be consistent due to how they make a living.

It led me to spend some time in reflection, as I had some of the same questions.

I spent the past several weeks talking with – but more importantly – listening to people who work in the performing arts and entertainment industries, and learning how the ongoing pandemic has changed their careers and their lives. Those conversations were both enlightening and heartbreaking.  

There were CC people who volunteered their time and talent to be a part of the festival, then asked not to be credited for their work.

This surprised me, since one of the biggest perks of being in a festival is adding it to your resume. Participating in a festival speaks to the quality of your work. It demonstrates your art has been vetted, and you, as an artist, were selected because you stood out from others. A festival boosts your credibility and makes you more appealing to those who might want to hire you for future work.

Unless it’s about Covid.

Then it has the opposite effect.

Then you participate without recognition, for fear of future employers associating you with art which speaks truth to a world that has swaddled itself in denial.

Even more triggering than the C-word is the sight of a mask in the performing arts scene.

It’s a case study in irony. At the start of the pandemic, the arts and entertainment industries were among the first to embrace masking, testing, and other precautions to safely get folks back to work. And while industry-wide Covid protocol mandates were lifted in 2023, many productions have voluntarily continued with these measures behind the scenes. The arts and entertainment industries have done a lot of heavy lifting in terms of keeping masking normalized in Los Angeles and NYC, the two cities where the performing arts largely live. It isn’t a coincidence that mask ban legislation has been introduced in both locations. Career artists and entertainers have been among the first and the loudest to step up and fight against them.

So while Covid-19 mitigations in entertainment continue behind-the-scenes, keep in mind they’re only used for production meetings, auditions, staging, blocking, rehearsals… all the stuff leading up to shooting scenes for a film or delivering a live performance onstage.

And when it’s showtime, many producers and performance venues will not allow performers to wear masks on camera or onstage.

Nor will they require audiences to mask.

Think about the message that sends to performing artists.

This production is an investment worth protecting, so we will continue to use Covid-19 protocols to keep everything running smoothly behind the scenes. But you?

Star of this theatrical production?

Touring comedian?  

Lead singer of the band?  

Sorry, but no protections for you when it’s your turn to step into the spotlight.

You’re disposable.

It reminds me of this scene from Ted Lasso season 3, episode 7, in which the character Sam Obisanya has an emotional meltdown in the locker room. He tearfully speaks of how the very people who love him while he’s kicking a soccer ball around for their entertainment are the same people who deny him his humanity in his most vulnerable moments. 

How fucked up is that?

How fucked up is it that career entertainers are regularly forced to choose between accepting the hazards of exposure, or walking away from work they depend on to survive? Choosing the latter means they could lose everything they’ve worked for – their independence, their security, their careers. They risk burning bridges with employers and losing favorable references they need to secure future work. They risk breaching contracts and having to pay back money they don’t have.

It’s unfair. It’s exploitative.

It's a sombering reminder that not everyone has the privilege of masking at work.

Not everyone has the privilege of being a spokesperson for Covid awareness and safety.  Frankly, I’m surprised that anyone who works in this industry is voluntarily choosing to keep up with any Covid precautions at all, especially when we’re all well aware of how people are treated for masking public.

But there are performing artists who, in spite of not always being able to protect themselves while performing, still mask up in healthcare settings, on public transit and flights, in the grocery store, and in plenty of other public settings. They’re still breaking chains of transmission. They’re still trying to reduce harm in a world that has given up and accepted it as normal.

That matters, and we need to hold space for them in our community.

Remember the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, when life as we knew it changed abruptly? Many of us found ourselves at home more than we were used to, struggling with isolation, facing an uncertain future as we watched a novel virus rip through the population and claim lives.

Think back on those difficult days for just a moment.

Now imagine being back in that same time, but without TV shows or movies or music or comedy or fiction. Imagine if there had been no art, no entertainment, to distract you from that moment in time. Nothing to help you reflect upon what was happening in the world around you, to evoke memories of happier times, to help you feel hopeful about the future, to inspire you to create art of your own…

Imagine it.

It would have sucked.

Don’t stop imagining it, because we’re speeding headfirst into a future with an abysmal landscape for the arts, now that we’re treating performers like sacrificial lambs.

I’ve been sitting with the discomfort of my own hypocrisy, knowing I’m still subscribing to streaming services for movies and TV shows. I still listen to new music, still watch content that was filmed over the past few years. I’m actively consuming art and entertainment which was produced in a way that exploits performers by forcing them to work in unsafe conditions. I suspect most of us are. I don’t have a good answer for what we should do about it. I’m certainly not suggesting we all stop consuming art and entertainment.

We need art to survive and thrive.

But I do want our community to think about our relationship with the arts, and consider that we have a responsibility to performing artists in our community.

If we want them to keep producing art that speaks to us as CC people, AND stay safe while performing, AND be free to be visible with their precautions, we need to create the conditions in which it can happen.

The world outside of us isn’t going to do it.

And like I said, I don’t have a good answer for how to fix it.

But I have some thoughts on how we can get started.

I’m inviting you to join me at the edge of a rainstorm, where we acknowledge that performing artists have to make difficult decisions about their careers, and where we withhold assumptions about how much they care about Covid or how much they’re doing to limit the spread of Covid based solely on optics.

I’m inviting you to help with creating (literal) safe spaces where Covid Conscious artists can perform and be compensated for their work. We just wrapped up a 5-day performing arts festival in which artists from all over the world took the stage and did what they were born to do. They found new fans and earned income as they shared original works that touched hearts, gave voice to the pain and trauma we’ve experienced, made many of us feel seen, and strengthened our resolve to keep going.

It all happened over Zoom, and nobody got Covid or any other infectious disease as a result of participating in the festival.

As a fellow Inspire Festival planning team member so eloquently put it, “The world has moved on from Covid, and that’s not going to change for the foreseeable future. This is just the way things are now. But for those of us who still recognize the threat and care about mitigating harm, we’ve adapted. We can continue to adapt.”

We’ve already adapted by embracing masking, testing, air purifiers, and other mitigations as a normal part of our lives.

Now we can adapt to new ways of creating and consuming art and entertainment in our community.

The team that brought you the Inspire Festival has a new project in the works – a new livecast variety show series, Saturday Night Long. Our vision is to produce a running show for the Covid Conscious and Long Covid communities that mirrors the format of late-night TV and weekend variety shows, with sketch comedy, celebrity guests, monologues, humorous takes on the headlines of the week, music, standup, and more.

Our aim is to provide a virtual venue where producers, directors, writers, and performing artists can gather online to work safely, earn income, and produce a show that serves as a conduit for building community.

We won’t be able to do it alone, so we’re looking for fellow CC folks with performing arts experience, sponsors who can help us cover expenses, and YOU – the audience – to help us make it happen.

Drop us a line here to get on our mailing list for updates, and let us know if you’d like to support the show or get involved. We realize it’s just one small step toward making an impact, but see it as a meaningful step nonetheless. 

May we all do our part to bring our CC peers in the arts out of the edge of the rainstorm, to a place where we can all keep each other safe and warm.

In good humor & solidarity,

GP

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