LOOKING AHEAD
Local performing arts leaders discuss future of live entertainment
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. » As the community marks one year since performing arts venues were shuttered due to COVID-19, local leaders are looking forward to presenting live entertainment again soon.
In a recent panel discussion titled “Planning To Go Live” at Caffe Lena and livestreamed to an online audience, officials from Caffe Lena, Opera Saratoga, and Saratoga Performing Arts Center spoke about the future of entertainment in the Saratoga Springs area.
Panelists Elizabeth Sobol of SPAC, Lawrence Edelson of Opera Saratoga, and Sarah Craig of Caffe Lena all shared some insight into their reevaluation processes, the maze of decisions they are navigating this spring and the long term impacts of the ongoing pandemic on their organizations - as well as what’s on the horizon as the industry at large reopens.
Through the shared experience of the COVID-19 pandemic, arts organizations in the region have all become essential to each other, panel moderator Vivian Nesbitt remarked.
One major factor that has helped SPAC, Caffe Lena, and Opera Saratoga weather this past year is collaboration, the panelists agreed.
“This year has really emphasized the value of collaboration and of what we can all do to help each other’s organizations that ultimately enriches the community,” Edelson said.
Craig commented on the way that the arts world, in general, has come together to preserve the “ecosystem of the arts,” which requires diversity, evolution, relationships, and unpredictability.
“It truly feels transformative to be connected to arts organizations that - we’re all under fire, we’re all suffering, we’re all facing devastation of one sort or another,” Sobol said, “and yet hope burns eternal for all of us because we’re working together.”
Collaboration will continue to be key as the organizations present their 2021 programming.
“This coming year is going to be harder than the pandemic year,” Craig said, to nods of agreement from her colleagues.
In another recent conversation called Arts Town Hall presented by the Saratoga Springs Arts Commission via Zoom, a different group of local industry leaders from SPAC, Universal Preservation Hall, Saratoga Chamber Player, Nacre Dance Group, Home Made Theater, and the Skidmore College Theater Department also talked about performing arts amid the pandemic.
While most organizations have explored ways to present performances virtually over the past 12 months, and that format is likely to stick around, panelists said, it cannot replace the live experience that eventgoers and artists love and miss so much.
Looking ahead, the town hall speakers expressed their interest in learning what audience members need to feel safe at an inperson performance.
Multiple local organizations are sending out surveys with questions regarding this topic because many believe that knowing the answers will be crucial to their success in 2021.
“It’s a new world, and we need to closely examine how we move forward,” Eric Rudy of Home Made Theater said.
“The question of safety - people feeling safe - is sort of the crux of it as far as being able to perform live for audiences again,” said Jill Levy of Saratoga Chamber Players, “and we can’t predict, we just have to see how things unfold and go from there - like we’ve been doing, but hopefully things are going to improve.”
The full “Planning To Go Live” conversation can be viewed online at youtube.com/caffelena and a video of the Arts Town Hall is available online at https:// www.facebook.com/groups/ SSArtsCommission.