02/04/2023
A unique piece of journalism from Florida Theater On Stage starts Wednesday, Feb. 8: I’m Still Here: South Florida Theater’s Epic Journey Through the Pandemic and Beyond, What Happened, What Is Happening, What May Happen. This four-part in-depth series—rooted in 38 formal interviews of Florida artists and a score of informal ones—tracks and documents the near-Shakespearean arc of that paralysis, pivot, people leaving the profession, people finding new avenues to tell stories, patrons donating the cost of lost tickets, artists learning new skills, certainties becoming uncertain, and an unquenched drive to not just survive but prevail.
…..The first piece details the crippling effect that Covid had on productions, artists struggling to stay vital, the companies’ devastated bottom lines and the first stirrings of resurrection online.
…..The second part running Sunday Feb. 12 looks at the early imaginative attempts to entice audiences back, performing in parking lots and storefronts—with varying results until Omicron redoubled the challenges and set some efforts back to square one.
…..The third part running Wednesday Feb. 15 investigates troubling issues that had graduated from complaints whispered in dressing rooms to being aired on Facebook with carefully cloaked specifics: sexual improprieties, deleterious working conditions and racial issues ranging from casting to microaggressions in rehearsal.
….The final part running Sunday Feb. 19 depicts the comeback, encouraging, but hardly secure—how what you see has changed and how it might yet change and what still needs to be changed.
The pieces are lengthy so we recommend putting aside a quiet minute or twelve to put your feet up and read as they are posted online.
We are very proud of this work begin last summer and reported over the past eight months. We really hope you will share them as they come out.
