This year has been a challenge of epic proportions. Three hundred thousand dead and counting from COVID-19 in the United States alone. Our ability to gather in person at the theatre brought to a halt. Artists, cultural workers, and theatres facing loss of income and head-on economic devastation. The murder of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and so many more, and the subsequent uprisings for racial justice in our society and in our theatre field through the gift of organizing efforts like We See You White American Theater. A contested, fraught election season. So much broken, so much suffering, so much work to do.
Writing now from our makeshift home offices, as the first vaccines are being delivered in the United States, we feel a glimmer of hope for our future and for the ways in which the theatre field may emerge on the other side of these pandemics changed for the better. Despite the discomfort that comes with thinking through 2020, it feels important somehow to mark this year with a closing reflection as we usher in what we hope will be a better year to come.
How 2020 Has Clarified Our Priorities
This year has shown the team at HowlRound the importance of continually centering anti-oppression and the climate emergency in our work. Our commons-based approach has proven to be incredibly resilient in the face of 2020’s challenges, so we have also reaffirmed and strengthened our belief in this ethos. We have been evolving and iterating our curatorial frame and editorial processes to further embody our values of accessibility, equity, and inclusion. We are focused on deploying our resources directly to theatremakers in need. As a result, this year we have raised our contributor fees and we are constructing our upcoming programming with this in mind.
Overall, we are doubling down on HowlRound’s role as a field support. We are serving as an accessible digital space for theatremakers to ideate, connect, and collaborate across borders about practices relating to anti-racism, anti-oppression, the climate emergency, and adapting and innovating during this time. As a digital knowledge commons co-created by theatremakers who share their insights and experience, HowlRound has been uniquely positioned to meet this moment with resilience and responsiveness as we advance our vision of a theatre field where resources and power are shared equitably in all directions.
Theatremakers Respond to COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic has radically increased the demand for ways to meaningfully connect with others virtually, so we have scaled our capacity for HowlRound TV to meet this need as theatremakers come to HowlRound to process this experience, to share artistic practice, and to envision what’s next. We were able to quickly offer a guide to the field as artists and producers scrambled to move programming online; partner with Nicole Brewer, Hannah Fenlon, Ann Marie Lonsdale, and Abigail Vega to produce #ArtistResource Talks that offered pandemic support to freelance artists; and to collect several exceptional pieces from our community of contributors on their learnings in the pivot to digital.
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