If there was a financial aid bill for live theatre passed right now...

[Call_me_jorge]

Posted: 11/29/20 at 4:51pm

If Congress and the president passed a financial aid package for the entire US theatre community what should be included? How much money is necessary to keep the theatre chugging along during this crisis? Would it include aid to the unemployed actors and crew or only for the theatre/company owners?

[itsjustmejonhotmailcom]

Posted: 11/29/20 at 5:09pm

Call_me_jorge said: "If Congress and the president passed a financial aid package for the entire US theatre community what should be included? How much money is necessary to keep the theatre chugging along during this crisis? Would it include aid to the unemployed actors and crew or only for the theatre/company owners?"

An updated version of the Federal Theatre Project (paying theatre artists to create theatre) would be wonderful but will never happen.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 11/29/20 at 11:06pm

A universal basic income would be a great place to start and non-profit theaters could develop contingency plans for "dormancy periods" brought about by pandemics and the like.  As in, what would the bare minimum human interaction-based activities be that could keep a company or theater "alive" while producing exactly nothing? I would imagine something like a company not being wed to a specific building or location once they can't have audiences together. This way, Company X, could continue to exist but once it is safe again, *them* they could start worrying about where they will gather, If their old spaces are still available, great.  What I think I am getting at in my barely comprehensible way is, why should companies be paying rent if they have no customers? Just hibernate and reconstitute while it is safe to do so.

(As an aside but not completely unrelated, I *really* don't want to hear from the theater companies that I have sent money to in the past, and even at the beginning of the pandemic, this "Giving Tuesday." EVERY DAY has been Giving Tuesday since this started.