ON Stage January

Jankriti, 2023

COVID-19 Pandemic comes with hardship, and it substantially negatively impacts sociocultural, economic, and artistic expression worldwide. Everything has been shut down globally to prevent citizens do not in contact with Corona Virus. The only medium that keeps connected globally and helps scholars and artists is the web-based digital medium. Digital media provides humans with a systematic way of giving and taking relationships through social media and websites. It has been observed that the impact of lockdown does not fall equally: the virus seems to discriminate between digital and physical arts. The cinema, photography, music, and video arts keep producing on pre-existing simulations with digital devices and the internet, such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube, and many other platforms. On the other hand, these intersectional and intergenerational vulnerabilities paint a complex web of interconnections that impact various arts dependent on physical exhibitions such as theater, painting, and installation. The factors like social distancing and lockdown limit their artistic expression and income fluidities. Many theatre-makers, performers, painters, and sculptors do not perform or exhibit their work because of the restricted movement of people. They are still waiting for the complete resume for the social activities. Simultaneously, many theatre-makers, performers, and visual artists are knocking the web-based digital platform (YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Mozilla-hub, VRChat, OpenSimulater, Workadvanture, etc.) to exhibit and perform their works. The paper attempts to explore and understand significant development or crisis that have occurred because of the Pandemic in the last two years. The Pandemic has wiped out or overcome many debates and critics of digital media and new media in contemporary Indian Theatre. The central question was the ‘use of digital technology in theatre’ and the question of ‘live and mediatized.’ These questions almost disappeared from debate because of the significant crisis of Theatre and performance space and audiences due to Covid19. Now we have another set of questions that is much more complex than the previous one, Theatre through digital media. Previously, the question was about the choice and exploration of new visual language, which has become necessary. Theatre makers have only two choices if someone wants to perform; they must come through ‘digital media’ (online) or wait for the normalization of the Covid-19 situation. The paper will also explore the emerging practices during the Covid19 lockdown. Many enthusiasts come forward to create a ‘digital platform’ and exhibition to express their artistic expression. The paper will explore and examine the emerging theatre and performance practices drawing examples and incites from production performed during the complete lockdown. For analysis of the above question, the paper deals with ‘Look here is your machine. Get in!’ exhibited in the ‘Serendipity Art Festival, 2020’ curated by Kai Tuchman and Anuja Ghosalkar on an online platform called ‘Mozilla hub.’ The paper is not seeing this as the only representative of this kind of practice. Many people across the globe are performing online. The paper took this product just because of the researcher’s limitations.

International Journal of Integrative Humanism, 2021

It is true that entertainment enriches not just the body, but the soul and the spirit just as food nourishes the body. Theatre/film, music and sports entertainments have served over the centuries as vehicles that have built not only the society but humanity. With these variables, it is a pity to come to terms with the realities of the Covid19 pandemic which includes; serial lockdown, social distancing, wearing of the discomforting facemask and eventual death. This paper therefore examines the effects of Covid19 on the entertainment industry. It applies Cintya Lanchinba, Andrea Bonilla'-Bolanos and Juan Pablo Diaz-Sanchez the Microeconomic perspectives model which states that; the very nature of any containment strategy reduces economic activity so that aggregate supply (AS) and aggregate demand (AD) fall. Pay-cuts, review and termination of artiste contracts, reduction of supply and demand for the entertainment industry, hunger and eventual death are some of the findings of this paper. The paper therefore recommends that there should be adequate funding by the government, the multinationals, highly spirited individuals, and various entertainment guilds to researches especially, science related not just for curative but for futuristic preventions of pandemics.

Journal of Creative Arts, Communication and Media Studies , 2023

The COVID-19 pandemic was sprung upon the globe in 2020, and up till now the world still reels from its aftershocks. Without doubt, theatre is one of the worst hit sectors in the global economy. This is because the COVID-19 induced protocols and lockdown policies are hostile to the nature and practice of theatre. In Nigeria, theatre workers were ill-prepared for the effects of the onslaught of the dreaded virus on their livelihoods, and they struggle to adapt to their current stark realities. However, the Eko Theatre Carnival (ETC) 2020 braved the storm and presented itself in what Segun Adefila-the festival director, coins a 'Real_Tual' format. This coinage of the words 'real' and an abbreviated 'virtual', basically refers to a blend of the minimized live and maximized virtual performances. In this paper, I investigate what the previous editions of the Eko Theatre Carnival were like, what has changed, and plans for future editions as the festival adapts to the new world order. For this study, I employ the participant observation method to collate data, and I adopt Adefila's 'Real_tual' approach to interrogate the pros and cons of distributing theatre presentations through digital means. The paper explores the challenges and prospects of performing during the pandemic, and what the future of theatre in Nigeria looks like. This study finds that digital media skills, creative collaborations, and promoting virtual theatre presentations are features of the new normal in producing theatrical performances for global consumption.

Remaking Culture and Music Spaces: Affects, Infrastructures, Futures, 2022

To understand fully the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on concert life, the following points should be heeded: (1) The pandemic and its lockdowns arrived as the global music business had solidified around online streaming and live music as major income streams, with lockdowns wreaking havoc on the latter. (2) While music superstars are the most visible and well-funded in live music, non-superstars are the ones keeping live music alive, as well as the ones who suffered particularly amidst the lockdowns. (3) The pandemic struggles of non-superstars, in turn, reverberated throughout the cities in which they once performed prior to the lockdowns, doing so financially and communally. We demonstrate these points, on the one hand, by drawing upon the insights of multiple literatures and publicly available data on the global music business. On the other hand, we track live music in three cities-Athens (Greece), Atlanta (USA), and Taipei (Taiwan)-showing when and where their concerts grew silent amid the pandemic, as well as for whom that silence occurred (non-superstars vs. superstars). We thus provide a 'big-picture' view of COVID-19's impact on musicians and communities as it pertains to in-person concerts in an era of online streaming.

Theatre Research International

The outbreak of the COVID- pandemic has had an unprecedented impact on the arts. Deserted theatre venues were one of many signs that the time, as Hamlet would have it, was out of joint. The pandemic struck at the heart of theatre and performancetheir liveness. As many of us followed these developments (mostly) glued to our screens, theatreas institution, concept and practicebegan to undergo another seismic change. Its very presence had to be redefined. Various theatre archives began to open for publics around the world. Streaming services and digital plays made theatre available to new audiences. At an early stage of lockdown, the National Theatre in London, for instance, launched the National Theatre at Home initiative, thus enabling audiences to view performances from the theatre's archive on YouTube for free. In June and July , the Old Vic produced a series of special live performances of their show Lungs, starring Claire Foy and Matt Smith, as part of their newly launched OLD VIC: IN CAMERA series. Other institutions and companies, like the Oxford-based Creation Theatre, produced entirely new shows for Zoom. Of course, such and similar endeavours had been under way even in pre-COVID- times. Over the past decade, we have seen the rise of live-to-cinema broadcasts: the National Theatre, for instance, began the NT Live initiative in  and the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford in . 1 Online livestreaming of the performing arts, which audiences typically watch from their homes, 2 has developed in parallel. Livestreaming has also been used by theatre festivals, such as the Berliner Festspiele, which put on Forced Entertainment's Table Top Shakespeare in . During the pandemic, livestreamed and pre-recorded performances, as well as those specifically designed for Zoom, became the standard, and often the only possible, format for putting on a show. Despite the severity of the circumstances that had brought about this change and exacerbated existing precarities in the theatre sector, the pandemic-related restrictions and lockdowns also provided practitioners with the opportunity to experiment with new forms of theatre-making and explore alternatives to in-person theatre. This moment of crisis was, thus, also approached as an incentive to innovation, as a motor for creativity and heightened improvisation, particularly since the theatre industry had to reinvent itself in order to maintain an economically feasible position. It was also a moment that spotlighted theatre's role in (virtual) community-building. In an article

2020

The current situation has resulted in conditions conducive to conversation that have been, if not entirely lacking, ignored for too long. Conversation is a vital component of my research as a filmmaking and podcast practitioner, scholar, critic and teacher. In the words of Theodore Zeldin good conversations are "meetings on the borderline of what I understand and what I don't" (1998: 88). They encourage what Les Back terms 'sociological listening', an act where the "importance of living with doubt in the service of understanding, of trying to grapple with moral complexity" (2007: 14-15) comes to the fore. It's simplistic, if not a little cliché, to lean in to the notion that conversation is a (golden) art-form that has been lost and in need of recovering but there could be little disagreement that conversation as a method for investigation, one that both formulates Lorde, A.

http://www.critical-stages.org/22/arts-journalism-and-theatre-in-the-pandemic-era-mutations-redefinitions-and-challenges/?fbclid=IwAR2J9qYmfuuSRO6LD4U_le01tTtlm-zJ3hqMfuBqPKj0VwkVHfp1kxFF3ZA This paper seeks to explore the new landscape that has emerged during the period of the so-called "corona crisis" within arts (cultural) journalism, focusing specifically on theatre reporting and theatre reviewing. Drawing examples from the Greek and international print and online media, I aim to show the extent to which the sudden pause of artistic life and the rules of social distancing have reshaped not only the contents, formats and genres of journalistic writing for the arts, but also the very essence of the notion of cultural event and cultural news. The paper will consider the importance of the role of theatre journalists and critics in identifying and highlighting urgent issues within the arts in the context of the pandemic. It will also explore the new challenges that have emerged during (and, indeed, as a consequence of) the pandemic. Finally, it will ask if the changes in media coverage of the arts are only temporary, or if arts journalism is entering a new era.

Academia Letters, 2021

The current coronavirus pandemic 1 has caused many industry closures in an attempt to stop the spread of the virus. In one of the hardest-hit states, New York, Broadway shuttered on March 17, 2020, and has yet to reopen. 2 Many states followed suit and theatres worldwide have gone dark. The conditions for a theatre to resume operations are far from perfect, resulting in live entertainment to be one of the hardest hit industries of the pandemic. 3 In the prior fiscal year, the arts and culture sector alone generated $877 billion from over 675,000 small organizations and businesses all over the United States. 4 Theaters have turned to virtual performances via streaming platforms in an attempt to earn revenue and create easily accessible entertainment into the homes of traditional theatregoers. 5 In order to return to live theatre,

Abraka Humanities Review, 2022

This study explores the business of theatre in a Covid-19 and post-Covid-19 environment. Although theatre is not a physical medicine that can treat an infectious disease like Covid-19, it is believed to therapeutically heal the sick and a sick society. More so, theatre, taking the colouration of a change agent, is thought to seek ways to instill societal change in the fight against any disease outbreaks, of which Covid-19 is one. As an agent of social change, the usefulness of theatre in bringing about positive change through its web of persuasion and entertainment cannot be downplayed, especially when there is the need to put aside an existing culture. The ways in which theatre becomes a veritable instrument in curtailing the spread of the Covid-19 disease, as well as a vehicle of entertainment through which members of society are purged of their tragic emotions due to the loss of a loved one or economic hardship, are explained using artistic and literary research methods. The result shows that the theatre has not reneged on performing its role facetiously since the outbreak of the coronavirus disease. However, the little it has done has been hypocritical. Nonetheless, with the virus still in existence, there is a greater need to engage the theatre in more sensitisation shows on all media of communication. It is suggested that subsequent creative works should be reflexive of the period.

Cultural Trends, 2023

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the global cultural and creative sector has experienced major transformations in the way performances are conceived of, produced, packaged, and sustained. The involuntary shift to the online (and now hybrid) models and platforms of showcasing have compelled artists not just to rethink performance itself but also to address larger global and local socio-political and economic issues. This paper aims to look at two short case studiesdance and theatreto underscore the transformations in "performance economy" in the pandemic. It considers the adaptability of these forms to newer idioms/platforms, and the creative labour involved in their sustenance through ongoing challenges. The study focusses on interviews of performers, and self-reflexive experiences of pedagogic training as a dancer through online apps. In doing so, the paper asks how cultural resistance, social citizenship and inclusivity in performing arts address questions of labour, inequality, and creative justice.