URI_Research_Magazine_Momentum_Fall_2020_Melissa-McCarthy

When the SHOW No Longer Goes On

COVID-19’S IMPACT ON THE ARTS

Tony Estrella ’93 Artistic Director, Rhode Island’s Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre Instructor of Theater, URI

written by ARIA MIA LOBERTI ’20

From shuttered museums and galleries to vacant theaters and silent concert halls, the COVID-19 pandemic has vastly changed the face of the arts. According to the National Endowment for the Arts, the arts contribute $763.6 billion to the U.S. economy and employ 4.9 million people nationally. As a result, the impact of the virus — and of the necessity of social distancing practices in particular — come at a high price, both for the U.S. economy and for the artists, technicians, managers, and patrons who fuel this industry. Despite the limitations, however, artists are finding innovative ways to adapt to the challenge, exchanging physical audiences for virtual ones and striving to keep people connected. Judith Swift, professor of communication studies and of theater at the University of Rhode Island (URI), and director of the URI Coastal Institute, works at the intersection of professional theater and the sustainability sector. “Artists choose to work on the cutting edge of what is human, and help us understand the human

condition, which is all the more important when the human condition is stressed beyond measure,” Swift said. “When actors are unable to make a living, they can go online and do a reading of a play. But that is just a suggestion of the experience, not the experience itself.” As Americans self-isolate at home or seek comfort at the end of a long day working on the front lines in the health care industry, the arts often are a reprieve — whether by tuning into an opera or ballet broadcast, joining a live at-home concert from a favorite musician, or binge-watching favorite television shows. “Most of us do not give a lot of thought as to the factors that motivate us to go to galleries, concerts or theaters,” Swift said. “And, many would now argue that we — as a society — have far more pressing issues to be concerned about. But the arts are vital to meeting our needs to maintain our mental health, communities, and to enrich our human social interactions.”

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