The isolation of performers is what personally breaks me about this pandemic.
The generation most affected by this reshaping of the world is mine:
The generation that is just now graduating from university
Following years of education,
Following years of building professional experience and practice,
We are now scrambling.
On the outside I am calm. Perhaps the pandemic is a chance for me to breathe.
But uncertainty surrounds my calm like icy winds.
Do I even have to tell you I set this year up to be a big one?
We followed forged paths—precious advice for
springboarding ourselves into the professional sphere
lining up opportunities
living as creatives
We followed forged paths—to a creative world that no longer exists.
We must forge our own, somehow.
Audiences to play to dissipated in an instant.
Friends and colleagues to perform for, alongside, together—isolated.
Conventional artistic wisdom says we are independent by nature.
But the craft of performance is twined among endless moving parts.
Writers. Directors. Agents. Unions.
Peers.
Audiences.
Bodies.
Closeness.
Attention.
Without them, who are we? Who am I?
These parts exist in systems.
Artistic work participates in many machines of labour
Machines we expect to function, in the name of betterment,
But the system is not designed for this:
Machines, separate from their fuel, grind themselves to a stop.
If the system’s design has not conceived this, we must redraw the blueprints.
Do we have a choice otherwise?
We will be only the first generation of many to be shaken.
No one is “non-essential.”
Yet while people turn to the comfort of art
We see news of funding and response benefits
Promises of relief for some
Exclusions for others
that spiral them further into isolation.
How can you compete—how can you emerge—in an oppressive system?
Groomed and governed by the system of education
That serves as a trial run for the labour system.
A labour system we are watching leave artists behind.
The generation most affected by this reshaping of the world is mine:
For us to sustain ourselves, we must reject.
We must rebuild.
Our education is not ending. It is beginning.
We will set the stage.
The isolation of performers is what personally steels me about this pandemic.
See Connections ⤴