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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

Too great a (social) distance

September 10, 2020 by Terry Teachout

In this week’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column I write about the likely effects of social distancing on the arts in America. Here’s an excerpt.

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With Labor Day in the rear-view mirror, attention is turning to the fall season, the time when arts organizations announce their plans for the year to come and Hollywood rolls out “prestige” movies and TV series…only it’s not happening in 2020. Because of the pandemic, live theater is almost entirely shut down, as are most movie theaters. Ballet companies everywhere have scrapped “The Nutcracker,” the cash cow that pays their bills for the rest of the year, and museums are leaving up the exhibitions that were on display in March.

Yes, the art world is trying to sound optimistic, but the writing on the wall consists of two ominous words: social distancing. New York’s newly reopened Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art are admitting only 25% of their regular foot traffic. The Houston Symphony reopens its 2,900-seat concert hallthis Saturday, but it will play for only 150 people, while the Dallas Symphony is offering programs by “smaller orchestral ensembles” to be performed for audiences of no more than 75 in its 2,062-seat hall.

While the prospects for 2021 may seem more encouraging, appearances are deceiving. Chicago’s Writers Theatre announced a truncated four-play season—but warned that “we do not plan to produce in our theatres until early 2021 at the soonest.” The catch lies in those last three words. The same conjectural specificity applies to San Francisco Ballet, which plans to resume performances on Jan. 19. But the title of the 2021 season is “Take a Leap of Faith,” and it isn’t hard to guess what that means. If you’re planning to subscribe, remember that you’re being asked to “take a leap of faith” and trust that the pandemic will have gone away by opening night. As for Broadway’s 41 theaters, some insiders are now saying that they may not reopen until the fall of 2021.

Could it be that social distancing will lead to the end of the arts as we know them?…

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Read the whole thing here.

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Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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