TRAHC urges support for Save Our Stages Act
TEXARKANA, Texas — The Texarkana Regional Arts and Humanities Council expressed support for a new bipartisan Senate bill to offset the financial hurt caused by COVID-19 felt by music venues across the country.
In an email sent to members, TRAHC urged supporters to back the Perot Theatre and email elected officials using a League of Historic American Theaters form letter that asks officials to pass the Save Our Stages Act, a bipartisan bill sponsored by U.S. Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.
“If passed, this bill could provide our historic theatres with much needed funds during these very critical times. However, our allies in Washington are telling us that its chances of passing are very slim,” said Brian Goesl, TRAHC’s executive director, in the email.
Goesl urges people to send the letter and “rally all of our support for these advocacy efforts.”
“The funds being proposed in this bill will help ensure that our treasured arts institutions will be here to serve us when we are all able to come together once again,” the LHAT states in the letter, adding “Right now, historic theatres are dark because artists and audiences are responsibly participating in social distancing recommendations.”
As a venue, live music remains one of several forms of entertainment presented at the Perot Theatre, which TRAHC manages for the city of Texarkana, Texas. Randal Conry, operations director at TRAHC and the Perot Theatre, has been following the bill.
“The bill is authorizing funds for the Small Business Administration to provide grants for independent live music venue operators who’ve been affected by COVID-19 and the stay-athome orders. It would allow the Small Business Administration to provide grants for up to six months of financial support, to keep venues afloat, pay their employees and maintain until they’re able to open back up again and start receiving income through ticket sales,” Conry said.
With the Texarkana Symphony Orchestra and other musical acts performing regularly at the Perot, live music is a vital part of the entertainment mix at the historic downtown theater.
“It does have bipartisan support,” Conry said, noting has a long way to go and its passage is seen as a longshot.
“The thing it has going for it is it’s a very small, very targeted bill,” Conry said, adding that it would help their chances if people support the act and emphasize how important it is.
He said that for small music venues, signing Save Our Stages into law could prove a lifeline for their future.
“Small live-music and entertainment venues have been very hard hit by the pandemic. Nationally they were one of the first things to close here in Texas — pretty much everything closed at once. Because of the difficulties of having large, public gatherings, particularly public gatherings in an indoor enclosed space, we are necessarily going to be one of the very last businesses to be able to open back up,” Conry said.
Despoite that income not coming in, venues still have overhead costs to pay. “Which continue just in order to maintain the facilities while we’re being closed,” Conry said, noting the TSO has events planned at the Perot for November and December.
“We do plan to do movies at Halloween and our Christmas Tradition movies that we’re doing in December,” Conry said. “We have The Muses opera troupe coming in September, but that will be at the Regional Arts Center, where it’s a little easier to control and to space things out.”
The last event held at the Perot Theatre was in early March with a Kennedy Center children’s theater show, “Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!” That was five months ago.
“Nationwide I think 90% of venue operators without some help, they’re going to have to close down — some temporarily, some of them permanently,” Conry said, adding that “music and entertainment venues are a huge economic boost to our economy.”
Conry said small entertainment venues exist are all over this area, too. Live music venues add to the culture of any community. He said we can’t afford to lose them and urges people to contact U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, to urge him to support Save Our Stages.
“It would be devastating to our communities if places like the Perot close down and were not able to reopen,” Conry said, adding that support from the city of Texarkana and the TRAHC membership campaign, which is about to start, put the Perot on a bit better footing than other venues.
The TSO Executive Director Andrew Clark expressed support for the bill, noting the importance of venues like the Perot for orchestras like this.
“The Save our Stages Act is critical for small professional orchestras, like the Texarkana Symphony Orchestra, throughout the United States. Orchestras in smaller communities depend on independent theaters as their performance home. The TSO stands with the Perot Theatre in supporting the SOS Act and other efforts to provide needed gap funding until the Theatre can open fully again,” Clark said in a statement.
Artists, venues and music organizations across the nation have organized to support the Save Our Stages Act.
Country music icon Willie Nelson expressed his support for the bill, saying on
Twitter, “Live music is part of the fabric of America. But the whole industry is hurting & needs your help, which is why Congress should include RESTART & Save Our Stages in any COVID relief bill.”
Country music singer Margo Price lamented the closure of venues like the Port City Music Hall in Portland, Maine, saying on Twitter, “We must do all we can to #SaveOurStages so when live music returns, we will have a place to play.”
The National Independent Venue Association expressed a similar sentiment in a Tweet: “We NEED the #SaveOurStagesAct and the #RestartAct passed in order to keep independent venues from closing permanently.”
And according to a July 29 article in the Dallas Morning News, 111 arts groups in Dallas expressed their support for the Save Our Stages act in a letter.
A group of Dallas-area venues and other groups have scheduled Tuesday as a “Day of Action” to urge people to contact their representatives in Congress, according to the event post on Facebook.
“Time is running out to save our favorite DFW independent venues so we are calling on all music fans to TAKE ACTION and CALL representatives in Congress to #SaveOurStages on Tuesday August 4th. We are choosing a specific day to flood the phone-lines to make sure Congress takes notice and that our VOICES are heard,” the organizers state.
(On the Net: www.saveourstages.com and www.lhat. org/home.)