EIGHT months ago to the day, the entire live performing arts and entertainment industry took a bullet to the head. The Corona virus pandemic fired a lethal shot at point blank range to the entire industry and took over 12 million workers with it. March 12, 2020 will be forgotten as the day that the arts died.
A year ago I was on tour with the Blue Man Group. We were somewhere in the middle of Arizona or New Mexico doing a string of split weeks. Having spent most of September and October running up and down the California coast playing split weeks and one-nighters; we were happy to finally get a change of scenery. Plus Arizona and New Mexico smell a lot better than California does.
I had made my peace with the tour some weeks earlier when we were in Denver and committed to staying through the end of the tour. The tour was scheduled to run through June 14, 2020 after moving to the Midwest and east coast in the spring, including a two week run in Washington D.C. in May. That would have put us at 33 weeks on the road and playing more than 260 shows in 60 different cities across the United States and a week long run in Monterrey, Mexico.
We didn’t make it.
I had started to pay attention to the Corona virus pandemic in about mid to late February. The Chinese government put the whole province of Wu-Han under a hard quarantine to try to get a handle on the spread of the virus. The scum sucking slugs turned politicians that run our country were screaming at each other, arguing about whether certain actions such as closing the boarders or travel bans were racist or xenophoic and how there was nothing to worry about…blah, blah, blah… In hindsight, it all seems so trite and trivial now.
On March 12, 2020 we were loading in to The Landmark Theatre in Syracuse, New York. We had just come off an eight day long, four city run which included two one-nighters back to back. So we were looking forward to sitting in one place for a few days. It was a pretty normal day for us, and we were supposed to spend four days playing five shows. About an hour after we came back from lunch during our load in, we started hearing some chatter from the local stage hands; rumors and whispers, more checking of phones than normal. And then we started hearing more rumors, rumors with more weight. The local business agent, and our production management started talking. Then word came that the scum sucking slug Governor of New York was going to shut down all public gatherings of 1,000 people or more.
What!? The Landmark theatre holds 3,000 people, and we had a nearly full house booked for our opening night. We got unofficial word that our entire run in Syracuse would be canceled. Then we heard that the shut down order was being extended to groups of 500 or more, and then mere minutes later to no groups of 100 or more. Within two hours the State of New York had banned all groups of 10 people or more and all public performances of any kind. Then it was official. We were well and truly fucked. So we stopped load in. We cleaned things up and put the stage in a safe state so that we could leave it over night. We would return the next day to load out.
That night we went back to the hotel and had a company meeting. At this point, no one really knew anything about what was going to happen. Our run in Syracuse had been cancelled, as well as two of our upcoming runs over the next two weeks. The short term plan was for us to return to the theatre the next day and load out and then everyone would fly home for a two week lay off. And then we would return to the tour once the pandemic passed and finish out the tour, possibly with an addition at the end to pick up the cities which we had to cancel.
I was skeptical, at best, that we would be returning at all. I was nearly 100% certain that the tour was going to be done and the whole world was looking at something much bigger than anyone could imagine. To that end, I packed and flew home with my personal Pelican case which had my personal tools and audio gadgets for the tour. The rest of the crew opted to leave their Pelican cases on the trucks, and it was more than three months before they were able to get them back.
An unforeseen catastrophe had struck the entire world wide human population: something that no government or organization anywhere on the planet was prepared to deal with. And it single handedly killed several entire worldwide industries, leaving 10s of millions of people out of work and with no way to find alternate work in their industries.
By the time I had returned home from the tour on March 14th, the whole world had changed. Cities and states were issuing lock down and quarantine orders like they were going out of style. Every live arts or entertainment event, concerts, tours, local performing arts venues, symphonies, ballets, operas, theatres, movie theatres, bars, clubs and restaurants, cruise ships, tourist destinations, state parks, fairs, beaches, conventions, trade shows, churches and schools; all were shutdown by scum sucking communist slugs (mayors and governors) trying to one up each other as they tested the limits of their self declared authoritie.
We were hopeful that things would blow over and we would be able to finish some of the tour. But as the days drug on, we started to hear about more cities that had been canceled due to the pandemic shutdown orders. Eventually the whole rest of the tour was canceled. We were hopeful that we would be able to start back up in the fall again. But that too failed. And now we have no official word on when or if the tour might start back up again.
The rest of the touring industry was in the same boat. Every music tour across the whole world cancelled. The Broadway League shut down all of Broadway, taking every theatre tour with it. Every show in Las Vegas closed. Every music venue in Nashville closed. London’s West End closed. Film and television production in Hollywood and Atlanta stopped. Local performing arts venues all over the country in every city shut down, some of them permanently. Production companies have gone bankrupt and had to sell off their gear. Millions of workers in the entertainment industry, many of whom are contract or freelance gig workers have been left out in the cold from the few measly peanuts that the government has offered as “help”.
As the weeks drug on, I slipped into a depression that lasted nearly five months. I was like a ship lost at sea, in the middle of a hurricane, and with no power and no rudder control. I had no work, no income, no projects to work on. There were no places to play music, and no bands that wanted to rehearse. We couldn’t go anywhere or do anything except grocery shopping for two full months. I spent weeks on the phone trying to call the Maryland unemployment office. Calling all day long; one day I spent more than 10 hours on hold with no answer on the other end.
And now here we are, eight months later and little has changed. I’ve been kicked out of the unemployment system for more than two months. I’ve worked a couple of one-off jobs, a day here, day and half there. But still have no significant income of any kind. There’s no help coming from the government. And millions of workers in the entertainment and live events industry are staring at mounting debt, and empty bank accounts, calculating how much longer they can hold out. Some have already left to take other jobs. Others I’m sure have made more…permanent choices.
The whole industry is dying. Actors, musicians, technical crews, and management are all facing the most dire of choices as they struggle through this shut down. Having their jobs and careers pulled out from under them by the government and the scum sucking slugs that run it, they are left with no good choices. We’re going to see a brain drain of talent; experienced and skilled artists and technicians that will be leaving in droves seeking other employment opportunities. My estimate is that by the end of 2021 when things finally start to open back up and shows start playing again; the whole industry will be 75% smaller than it was. And wages are going to drop by as much as 50% for those who are left as too many workers compete for too few jobs.
With the vaccine still months away, and full distribution estimated to take at least 6 months after initial availability: there’s no good news yet for the industry. And still, once the vaccine is available and widely distributed it will take 6 months to a year to start putting tours and shows together to restart production. It’s going to be 2022 before we see a full restart of the industry. That will be nearly a full two years of shut down. None of us can wait that long.
One day the public will wake up and start to ask what happened to all the concerts and theatre shows that they used to go to. And it will be too late.
The industry is already dead.