Author: Douglas McLennan

What Dancers Are Doing To Maintain During Lockdown

The recently interrupted tours, canceled premieres, locked studios and social distancing requirements have hit the financially fragile, socially enmeshed dance world hard. When your life revolves around lifting, leaping, catching, jumping and otherwise spending time (often literally joined at the hip) with your dance partners, how do you deal with solitary confinement? – Washington Post

Remembering Terrence McNally

Perhaps the most important comic voice in theater since Neil Simon, McNally wrote to amuse and awaken. Laughter for him was the greatest survival tool ever invented. Humor was his shield against the homophobia he experienced as a Catholic boy growing up in Texas, against the losses that rained down on him and his community during the worst days of the AIDS crisis and against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune — which in showbiz is even more outrageous than usual. – Los Angeles Times

Do Cities Work Against Us When The Pandemic Comes?

Michael Kimmelman: “The coronavirus undermines our most basic ideas about community and, in particular, urban life. Historians tell us that cities emerged thousands of years ago for economic and industrial reasons — technological leaps produced a surplus of agricultural goods, which meant not everyone had to keep working the land. Still, cities also grew, less tangibly, out of deeply human social and spiritual needs. The very notion of streets, shared housing and public spaces stemmed from and fostered a kind of collective affirmation, a sense that people are all in this together.” – The New York Times

A History Of Being Alone

Virginia Woolf insisted on the need for a room of one’s own, but only the upper middle classes could have afforded one at the time. In the 19th century, only 1% of the British population lived on their own; in 2011 it was 31%, or some 8 million people. Yet as urbanisation and large families pitched people together, the anonymous world of industrial capitalism also split them apart. Rural life may have been rough, but at least you knew who lived next door. So if a longing to be alone became more acute, so did a sense of being forsaken. – The Guardian

Systemic Failure: Virus Shutdown Highlights Precariousness Of Arts Economic Model

The economic fallout of the virus has made the disparity between employed workers and independent contractors clearer than ever. New York has a paid-sick-leave law, but it does not cover contract workers. Many freelance workers in the arts have high self-employment taxes and health-insurance costs; they do not have 401(k) matching programs or employer-backed disability insurance, or severance when work is called off. If artists have health insurance through a guild or a union, coverage is usually dependent on working for a certain number of weeks every year. – The New Yorker