A year of survival and reinvention

Artists, venues and organizations persist through the dark times

by

Oh, the things I learned while talking to arts folks about surviving the COVID-19 pandemic. Bill Brehm, director of the Stoughton Opera House, planted grass for the first time this spring, and was enjoying watching it grow, except under the ferns. Steve Sperling, manager of the Barrymore, is more worried about Madison restaurants than music venues. Mark Bitney, a veteran Overture stagehand, has been keeping bees, playing trumpet and recording music. Kirk Stantis, executive director of the Bartell Theatre, kicked one of the door frames at the theater in frustration, and then apologized to the building.

It’s been a long, strange year for all of us. Normally, I would be negotiating for more space for arts coverage in the pages of Isthmus. There’s always more going on than we can cover. 

For the moment, there are no newsstands, at least for Isthmus. We survive online, where there are no space limits, and we’ve formed a new nonprofit. We plan to be back to print in 2021.

So, in a year like no other, I am pleased to report that unlike our struggling restaurants, the venues and most of the arts organizations are still here. They have suffered dramatic dips in revenue, but some of those losses have been offset by city, county, state and (hopefully more) federal grants and programs. Most of them have figured out how to move forward and do some version of what they do virtually. They are rethinking ideas of equity and accessibility, and reinventing themselves.

But we’ve had no traditional concerts or festivals since March. There are notable exceptions: Driftless Music Gardens hosted drive-in concerts near Richland Center, and venues, including The Sylvee, Cafe Coda and Cargo Coffee East, hosted livestreams. Some intrepid souls set up virtual concerts: Harmonious Wail, Sean Michael Dargan, Daithi Wolfe, and many many others propped up cameras on their desks or under trees to bring music to people with surprising regularity. Bands rehearsed outdoors and invited a few masked friends to witness. And it was so good. 

I am a musician, too, with VO5 and Loving Cup, bands that thrive on wall-to-wall dance floors and crowded festivals. And I can speak from personal experience that the psychological toll is real. We watched closely the activities of other musicians and tried to withhold judgement when they chose to play shows. We lost all our music income in one fell swoop. We pushed back dates over and over until it became clear that no gatherings were safe. We nervously produced a few livestreams and breathed sighs of relief when no one fell ill. We miss rehearsals in crowded basement rooms, the joyous togetherness of the Union Terrace on a summer night, Atwood Fest, and Dane Dances on Monona Terrace rooftop. We are terrified that it will be a very long time before those events happen again, and angry at organizations and individuals who didn’t take the pandemic seriously enough to act to keep us safe.

But we are the lucky ones. We are still here, among the living, still creating, still scheming how to get music, art, theater and dance to the people. 

Those venues and arts groups have shared abundant gratitude for their audiences and staff members. Everyone has stepped far out of their comfort zones in 2020. When Black Lives Matter protests erupted and roiled Madison and the nation, the organizations understood that getting back to normal isn’t enough. We need to come back safely, and more fairly. Art is for everyone. 

Although it is one of Madison’s tiniest venues, Communication on Milwaukee Street has emerged in its three years to become a mighty force for change. A small volunteer collective has steered the art and music venue into the cutting edge of Madison’s scene, providing a healthy ecosystem for visual artists, poets, activists and educators. Since the pandemic hit, Communication has created a bevy of essential online events: livestream concerts and discussions on the arts, classes and social justice clubs, art auctions and an upcoming Queer Madison Mixtape project. The organization is even launching a small-press publishing operation.

On the phone, while her young daughter swirls around her offering cookies, Communication’s director, Jennifer Bastian, relays the difficulties of keeping the small nonprofit alive while juggling childcare responsibilities with her own creative work. “We operate on super thin margins, like any arts organization or like any restaurant or other small business that doesn’t get a lot of community funding,” says Bastian, noting that Wisconsin’s dismal public funding puts the state 50th among the states. Writing grants, says Bastian, is exhausting and time-consuming, and quite difficult for shoestring organizations. She hopes for a better future for organizations like Communication, and especially for musicians. “I think one of the most frustrating things was figuring out how to support musicians,” says Bastian. “In my mind, one of the most important ways we could do that would be by surviving to be there afterwards and trying to do programs right now, like the Queer Madison Mixtape, where musicians and performers can record themselves.” 

Bastian says Communication is part of the National Association of Independent Venues (NIVA), which provides essential advocacy at the state and national levels for performance venues. She credits state and local members of NIVA with helping rectify an unfortunate situation where some small venues, including Communication, were initially left off the list of organizations receiving state COVID-19 totaling $15 million to support live music and entertainment. Heavy hitters like FPC Live, Monona Terrace, Overture and the Barrymore Theatre were on the list of recipients released by the Department of Administration on Dec. 3, while others, including The Bur Oak, Cafe Coda and Communication, did not make the cut. But Bastian confirms that the issue has been resolved after the DOA amended its venue grants, and that Communication received approximately $4,700 from the state venue grant and $10,000 from the NIVA emergency relief grant.

“I mean, merry Christmas, right?” says Bastian. “I don’t know why we were initially passed over, but people really went to work advocating for us and the other small venues around the state. It was very positive to have some people from the music community really push for what is right, because if people aren’t advocating for each other, then where do they think new talent is going to come from for the larger venues?”

The result, says Bastian, is that Communication will, at the very least, survive the winter. “I’m very happy, but that doesn’t mean that everyone is going to survive. I don’t know that we’ll be able to do any live performances for a long time. Who knows if we’ll do any in the next year?” says Bastian. “But I do think there’s a lot of potential for collaboration for doing events that are put on by Communication but in a larger venue that has more space to feel safe in terms of COVID practices. There are a lot of creative ways to continue supporting musicians, artists and just generally folks that are not supported in mainstream art and music spaces.”

Kirk Stantis, who works double duty as a member of IATSE Local 251, the International Association of Theatrical and Stage Employees, and executive director of the Bartell Theatre, spends a lot of time alone in the downtown space on Mifflin Street, which normally is a bustling hub for six community groups. He is pleased that the Bartell is receiving a $35,000 grant from the state’s pandemic relief fund. That will help keep the lights on, and the sole paid employee, the box office manager, on the payroll at least until fall. “The worst thing is to walk into the empty theater,” says Stantis. “I get tearful, you know, with the ghost light and the spirits of everybody who’s left their image on that place.”

Kirk’s wife, Bonnie Balke, a longtime performer, director and producer at the theater, says this season has been the strangest. “It hit me like a ton of bricks. Normally, right now I would be in the full throes of the panto (the Bartell’s annual holiday spoof). And there’s not going to be a Ball-Drop Blitz for New Year’s Eve. You used to have your holiday routine, your tradition, and it’s gone. What are we going to do?”

To make the funds last until income can resume, the theater’s heat is set at 50 degrees. “It’s very cold,” says Stantis. “The only entertainment I have is my granddaughter, Stella, comes over and we play on the stage. I’m dreaming about my friends and my coworkers and the union and the stagehands and entertainers who aren’t doing anything or making their money anymore. What I really see in my four-year-old granddaughter is the human condition to want to perform. And adults don’t lose that.”

The Bartell is undergoing some physical changes as well, as Urban Land Interests undertakes a development project that will involve moving the Bartell’s loading dock. It also will involve, says Stantis, digging a five-story hole right behind the building, which would be enormously disruptive when shows resume. Stantis says the developers have been cooperative with the Bartell’s leadership, but it’s not an ideal situation. 

To earn a little extra cash, the Bartell has been renting out its marquee. The rental was preceded by a deep cleaning, revealing horrific amounts of insect carcasses. “It’s one of those things, like I’m sitting here and this has been up for how many decades without being touched,” says Stantis. “The things you do.”

Steve Sperling, general manager of the 91-year-old Barrymore Theatre, says Madison’s largest independent venue is hanging on and still employing four staff people, thanks to a $218,000 grant from the state. He says the grant, along with Paycheck Protection Program loans and an unemployment work-share program, provides some “stability in terms of planning for our future.” He is now rebooking shows to late next year and even into 2022, and dealing with the constantly shifting news on the virus and vaccine availability. As a music lover and sponsor of Atwood Fest, he is concerned that Madison may need to endure another festival-less summer. “Obviously, the later in the summer the greater the possibility that it could happen, but oh boy, there's just no way to tell,” says Sperling. 

Sperling also credits NIVA, and especially Toffer Christensen of T-Presents, with helping advocate for distributing state funding to smaller venues. “I have not heard of any venues in Wisconsin, or locally, that were primarily music venues that have been forced to close,” says Sperling. “Everyone seems like they will be able to weather the storm.”

He believes the greater casualties are among local restaurants and individual artists. He says the Barrymore plans on setting up a professional sound system in the theater so that it can produce livestreams by mid-January; ticketed livestreams may help support individual artists, sound people and videographers. “There’s not any money in this for us, and we’re not looking to make any money,” says Sperling. “But we have several people who are interested in doing livestreams.”

Bill Brehm, director of the Stoughton Opera House, is also planning livestreams — and feeling the strain of constant reinvention. In May, while working from home, he told me that he had planted grass in his yard for the first time. It was a moment ripe for metaphor. But in describing the endless cycle of rescheduling concerts, Brehm uses another metaphor. “It feels a lot like treading water, but I think the further along that we get and the more that the future starts to seem like something that is actually going to occur, the more it starts to feel less like treading water and more like we're moving towards something. So that's kind of a relief, and there's some exciting stuff, I think, down the road. There's really a whole new kind of world of concert experience coming at us.”

The Opera House, which is owned and operated by the city of Stoughton, has also received state relief of more than $136,000.

Not only is Brehm grateful for the lifeline, he says the way the state funding is spread out to many venues supports the “overall ecosystem.” “I mean, we can be super great and solid and ready to go, but in the end, if nobody else is super great and solid and ready to go, we can’t make it. Because we rely on the venues that are ahead of us and behind us in tour routing. We can’t function as a standalone entity.”

Brehm believes the Opera House will use part of the funding to restore previous staffing levels once shows can happen again. The venue only has two full-time staff people right now, but when shows are running, it pays dozens of contract workers, including sound and light technicians. 

While it is closed for business, the venue is revamping its ticketing system and using previously raised funds to make improvements that will enhance and deepen the audience’s experience, including creating a second stage and concessions area, along with a lounge with “comfy furniture.” 

Most relevant to the pandemic experience, the Opera House is installing high-quality audio and video equipment so that it can begin broadcasting from the acoustically and visually stunning theater. Brehm hopes by the end of January to be able to create shows with small music ensembles, with technical folks spread out safely. “It's kind of like extreme training, getting ready for the fall, because I anticipate that in the fall we'll be having a mix of people in the room and people online,” says Brehm. “I think there's going to be like a virtual touring circuit, so bands can also sell to their entire fan base, nationally and worldwide.”

As exciting as all this is, Brehm still yearns for the live concert experience. “I don't even really like to think about the fall as a hybrid of live and remote shows, but I think that is what's going to happen. I think you're going to be looking at sticking it out remotely for at least another, probably a year and a half from now, which sucks,” says Brehm.

The Stoughton Opera House celebrates an auspicious anniversary on Feb. 22: It will be 120 years since the venue’s first show. “We’ll be doing some kind of event, it seems like remotely,” says Brehm. “It’s our second pandemic at the Opera House. We’re ready and equipped for our comeback.”

Less certain of a comeback is Mark Bitney, a 30-year veteran stagehand at Overture Center, who has been unemployed since the end of March, minus a couple of days to dismantle the set for the Broadway tour of Wicked, which eerily stayed in Overture Hall for months. “Your guess is as good as mine,” Bitney says when I ask if he has any inkling about when the members of the stagehands’ union might see work again. “I think we’re wondering if stuff will ever go back to how it was. Are people going to be able to hang out in close groups and feel comfortable anymore? Is it going to alter everything in the future? That kind of worries me.”

In addition to the work, he misses the camaraderie of working on crews that assemble every year for perennial shows. “There’s a few stage hands that I’ve worked with doing these Christmas shows for the last 30 years straight,” says Bitney. “Nutcracker and Christmas Carol. It’s sad to not see your homies.”

While Bitney waits to see how vaccines affect our ability to gather, he wonders whether his chosen career is at a dead end. “It’s crossed my mind to reinvent myself. I think that, in case this doesn’t clear up, I might need to take a different career. After doing this craft for 30 years, I might have to be forced to come up with a different game plan. It’s an intense pins-and-needles feeling.”

Meanwhile, Madison’s nonprofit theater groups have soldiered through, reinventing themselves as videographers, podcasters and movie directors; stepping up fundraising efforts; and dealing with the daily reality shifts that have become a maddening reality.

With their sets hanging in dark theaters, they moved programming online, honored contracts to pay artists, and offered whatever they could to their disappointed, yet understanding, audiences. Their generosity and positivity in the face of uncertainty has been remarkable. 

After the heartbreaking decision to cancel the summer and fall season, American Players Theatre, the beloved classical company that performs outdoors and indoors in a picturesque spot outside Spring Green, has seized the opportunity to create different sorts of work. For people who missed the setting, its COVID-safe audio soundscape, If These Trees Could Talk, was a moving tribute to the landscapes and peoples that pre-date thespians. The amount of online offerings from APT has been stunning, including a collaboration with PBS Wisconsin and a number of works by BIPOC playwrights.

Brenda DeVita, the company’s artistic director, is effusive about the support the company has experienced from the community and audience. “I can’t even describe how supportive and encouraging people have been,” says DeVita. She is proud that the organization created 13 pieces of original theater and employed artists to the best of its ability. She wants APT to return to live productions in 2021. “We can only hope and pray and plan really well, and then have a backup plan. It’s about trying to create live theater as safely as we can. We have to be frugal, but we have to be creative and make things, and we will be better for how we come through this.”

Mark Fraire, director of Dane Arts, recently spoke highly of APT’s response to the Black Lives Matter movement and calls for increased accessibility and diversity in the theater world. “Oh, I don’t see that there’s any other way,” says DeVita. “The struggle has amplified and solidified and demanded attention from everyone that there’s work to be done.” She describes planning for If These Trees Could Talk, which had a distinct focus on BIPOC voices and themes. “On the very first night we said we’ve got to figure out how to do this well, but we’re going to do it artfully and with real integrity, creativity and spirit.”

Meghan Randolph, multitasker extraordinaire and executive director of Music Theatre of Madison, in May produced one of the first live Zoomed theater productions, The Pussy Grabber Plays, about the exploits of the soon-to-be-fired commander in chief. Randolph’s MTM always presents an impressive slate of under-the-radar shows with local talent, and dove into the pandemic while also heeding the calls to root out systemic racism in arts organizations. While not able to produce live shows, MTM created a podcast and online reading of Ten Days in a Madhouse, a play by Karen Saari, and in November released an ambitious online concert, recorded at Cafe Coda, called Beyond the Ingenue: Trailblazers. (Andrew Rohn and I were commissioned to write a song for the show.) 

Randolph says the pandemic has created opportunities for soul searching. "The pandemic was brutal and scary for arts organizations. But I think it also sparked remarkable creativity in leaders and artists and illustrated how we can bring art to people in different ways,” Randolph writes in an email. “That's one facet of the answer to the accessibility question we've pondered for a long time: How do we get more people to join us and experience our work? People got so innovative and I loved seeing that. I believe all experiences should be paid for, but we could see a lot of restructuring of season offerings as well as budgets and funding opportunities so that we can have a mixture of bringing things to people and having them come to us.” 

She says this summer’s Black Lives Matter protests also prompted her group to take stock. “Like many organizations, MTM took a hard look at where we stood in terms of our work to be truly inclusive. We worked as a board, staff, and artistic associates to write an anti-racist statement and address ways in which we would work toward reducing harm,” says Randolph. “My friend and our artistic associate, Adam Qutaishat, was a fabulous resource in terms of helping me understand the perspectives and needs of the BIPOC community, and he gave so much emotional and creative labor and knowledge to our organization. My brother Patrick, who does curriculum development and works with underserved populations across the country, helped us write a cultural competency statement that I'm really happy to give to everyone who works with us in any role. It states how we collaborate, acknowledges that we have lots of room to be better, and talks about appropriate ways to speak, the assumption of good intentions, calling in instead of calling out, etc. I learned a lot and we are eager to continue improving and, in the process, meeting amazing talent.”

Children's Theater of Madison has also stepped up its efforts to diversify its offerings. It produced an online series of plays on race issues for young audiences and assembled a monumental cast for an online Christmas Carol. “It's been a year of continuous 'now, what?’” says the company’s artistic director Roseann Sheridan. “You make a plan, then change the plan, and you think one thing's going to happen, and then realize you can't do that. It’s just continually to try to find things that will really engage the young people and families and be something we can actually do in these circumstances.”

Just like schools, much of CTM’s work involves young people, especially a robust schedule of summer camps, and even though this year has been rough, Sheridan hopes for a better 2021. “We’re trying to predict something that's completely unpredictable right now. How many parallel paths can we walk down at once right now? If we can be back, if we can’t be back at all, if we can be back a little bit.” 

With the help of PPP money and a state grant, Sheridan believes the organization will come out the other side. “We’re not done. We’re not out of it,” says Sheridan. “In fact, when they say the darkest days are ahead, that’s hard to take in right now. But I really do think we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s just a much longer and windier tunnel than we thought it was.” 

Jen Uphoff Gray, Forward Theater Company’s artistic director, says this has been a year of appreciation for the troupe’s loyal audience, which has stuck with them for online shows, including the evocative The Lifespan of a Fact, and kept donations rolling in. Like all of us, she wishes she had a better handle on what the future of live theater will be. “I feel like that's going to be something that's going to have to play out really over the next 12 months or so,” says Uphoff Gray. “I was thinking about the main sense of perspective that I have now; it's just a heightened appreciation for something we already knew, which is that theater artists are unbelievably creative and resourceful. But none of us ever lived through anything like this. So to see that resilience and problem-solving creativity the way we have nonstop this year has been humbling and inspiring. When I think about our artists at Forward, and when I think about staff, dear Lord, and just everything that we've figured out this year, it’s inspiring. That makes me feel like you can survive anything.”

Uphoff Gray notes that while organizations might squeak by, individual artists are hurting right now. “I think that this year and really the next year or two are going to be among the worst that we've seen for freelance artists in our lifetime,” says Uphoff Gray. “I'm speaking specifically about the theater world, because that's where I have my area of expertise, but the amount of work is dramatically reduced, and the risk of trying to create productions in this environment is heightened.”

She says the crisis is especially acute for artists early in their careers. “There's no sugarcoating how bad this time is,” says Uphoff Gray. “But my assumption is for those who are able to find a way to stick it out for a couple of years, who have the ability to find that job that will cover the bills, I think the hunger for live entertainment is going to be as high as it’s maybe ever been in our lifetimes. I think we might see an explosion of opportunity and more work, maybe, than ever before.”