How Faces of the Arts came to be

In today’s Arts+culture section, you’ll find the third installment of the Faces of the Arts Shutdown series. The Union-tribune’s arts and entertainment editor, Michael James Rocha, tells us more about the project, which has been a collaborative reporting effort between reporters Pam Kragen, George Varga and Rocha himself.

Q:

How did the Faces of the Arts Shutdown series come about?

A:

On March 12, health guidelines forced arts organizations in San Diego County to shut down. Concert halls, theaters, museums, venues of all shapes and sizes — all closed. Shortly after, a handful of local arts groups began to make pandemic pivots, serving up all sorts of virtual programming, from live Zoom performances to digital exhibitions to streamed offerings of filmed productions.

We wrote about many of them, but by late summer, it was becoming evident that our coverage was lacking something important: the human side. Sure, we were writing about productions and the people in them, but by and large, our reporting focused on the programming. I felt we needed to show how the pandemic was affecting the lives of the people who make up San Diego’s thriving arts community.

So I wondered, how could we accomplish that? The answer was simple: by talking to the people themselves. That was the easy part. The hard part came next: finding people willing to talk — candidly — about what’s going on in their lives: physically, emotionally, mentally, financially.

Q:

You started with stagehands in September. Why?

A:

Since this all began, the people in many of our stories were all the “front-of-thecamera” types: the actors, the artistic directors — people who normally get the lion’s share of air time, so to speak. Not that they were not important, but I was curious to hear from the people we normally don’t write about: the costume designers, the set designers, the stage managers, the sound engineers. There was something appealing about hearing from people we normally don’t hear from.

Through social media, we sought out people willing to tell us their story. We found 10 people, and their stories were published on Sept. 6 — Labor Day weekend — in a special edition of the Arts+culture section called Faces of the Arts Shutdown: The Stagehands, with reporting by Varga and me.

This was never meant to be a series, but the response to the stagehands project was so positive that we wondered if the story had a life beyond that group. It turns out that it did. Musicians had a lot to say, and so did actors. We decided to speak to musicians for the second installment, with reporting by Varga, who writes about music. And then we aimed the third installment toward a December publication, with the goal of putting the spotlight on actors and dancers.

Q:

And they’re the subject today?

A:

Yes, today, we are publishing the third installment of the series. This time, we are focusing on the people who make our local stages come alive: actors and dancers. Collectively, we’re calling them “The Performers.” Each installment of the series has given us some insight into the psyche of arts workers, and in this report, Kragen, who writes about theater, shows us how the pandemic has affected not only the finances of this group of arts workers but their emotional well-being as well. Their souls are broken.

Q:

What did you learn personally from the series?

A:

It’s interesting that in the last 10 months, while we quarantined in our homes, we turned to the arts to keep us entertained and give us some semblance of normalcy. Yet, as an industry, the arts have been decimated. At first glance, when you see the streaming shows and the virtual exhibits, it seems like everything is fine. But in reality, there is an invisible human toll, and this series helped make that visible. It’s devastating to hear about a musician who’s seven months behind in rent or an actor who barely has the will to get out of bed. It’s heartbreaking. But there is a level of resilience there that is amazing to see.

Q:

What would you like readers to take away from the series?

A:

My hope is that for every theatrical production, for every virtual concert, for every Facebook Live, our readers realize that there are countless of arts workers who are struggling to put food on the table, wondering about how to pay their rent, or fearful about losing their health insurance. The arts are the beating heart of every community, and right now, our community’s heart needs CPR.