COVID-19 Event Cancellations

NHL cancelled all games for the rest of the year.

Phoenix Freelance groups as well as a few others I’m in on FB are filled with cancelled gigs.

We pretty much came to a halt here in our shop. Lost all of March gigs except a few at the convention center. I can’t name the gigs but we’re attached to a lot of big ones.

We still have our jobs in the shop for now. But I’m just waiting for the meeting especially if we lose April.
 
SF Symphony, Ballet, and large private houses (Hamilton, etc.) as well as concert venues around the Bay Area - all x'd. We're a week away from opening a HS production of Into The Woods that may be cancelled, or shifted to live stream. My klezmer/jaxx fusion ensemble's annual festival just got axed. Most colleges are closing down to shift to distance learning. All 80 parochial schools in the Bay Area. MLB. We could test the disk space limits of CBooth by posting cancellations.

Wishing everyone luck and patience in getting thru this. I know its particularly hard on our freelance community (both techies and performers). Maybe its time to dig up the buried kruggerands in our neighbor's back yards. Ron - can I borrow your metal detector, please? (and please get well, my friend!)
 
The Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon has cancelled shows for the next 4 weeks.
Maybe the world has ended and I didn't get the memo? Thank GOODNESS, DVS, Control Booth, and the internet are still here, for the nonce.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard
 
Steiner and Silvercup film studios in NYC closed. My wife is on ”The Gilded Age”, filming at Gold Coast Studios on Long Island, just texted me they are shutdown as of today, 4-6 weeks. 200 people on her movie alone.
 
Well let’s hope neither take me.
 
Around lunch time today, my county instituted a ban on assembly greater than 250 persons, but my gig was just over the county line and we were safe for today... and as we got ready to soundcheck the act, the sponsor/promoter and artist agreed the show would not happen. Then the PAC and convention gigs evaporated... all my stagehand work and 80% of my production shop's business is cancelled or postponed until August or September. Poof! in less than 24 hours. After a 4 hour truck loading call tomorrow, I'm unemployed for at least 2 weeks, likely a month or more. This is gonna suck. How bad remains to be seen. I'm on the "at risk" spectrum due to my age, too.
 
I think at this point most of the entertainment/hospitality business worldwide is unemployed for the foreseeable future. Not the kind of economic gaps you can fill in with a couple GoFundMe's.
 
I wonder if there's an upswing in contract positions for sanitizing facilities? Perhaps either thru labor brokers, or maybe some forward thinking unions could negotiate these addl tasks during this crisis.

It wouldn't be using our normal skills and artistry, but it might put food on the table and make a needed contribution.
 
It’s bizarre and not reassuring that some locations have determined that 500 people in a venue is the threshold. Other states say 250. Meanwhile college classrooms of 20 are banned. I understand they are not wanting to close down everything, but really we just need to accept that any gathering is a risk, even if it’s a birthday party. So the sooner you stop people gathering and spreading this virus, the fewer contract it. The US as a country is just waiting too long and unable to test in the numbers required to get people isolated. My take is it’s going to be worse here then many countries that were more proactive and earlier.
 
It’s bizarre and not reassuring that some locations have determined that 500 people in a venue is the threshold. Other states say 250. Meanwhile college classrooms of 20 are banned. I understand they are not wanting to close down everything, but really we just need to accept that any gathering is a risk, even if it’s a birthday party. So the sooner you stop people gathering and spreading this virus, the fewer contract it. The US as a country is just waiting too long and unable to test in the numbers required to get people isolated. My take is it’s going to be worse here then many countries that were more proactive and earlier.

Ya, I don't get the requirements either. A lot of small community theatres are still operating up here. Both our venues are closed because with both the capacity restrictions (you can only sell half your seats) and the 500 max that pretty much makes any profitability of a show off the table. With that, we are re-booking shows that can re-book into may. Pretty much writing off April. I bet we have to bump things again. This is going to be a total mess up here. We have 5 cases in the Capital district... 1 at U Albany. The entertainment industry is going to take a major major hit here. My 6 crew heads will all hit unemployment on Monday as will every other NYS stagehand.
 
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"At first, the cancellations came in a trickle.

A performance of the Mozart Requiem in Washington, D.C., Bach's St. Matthew Passion in Seattle. Local jazz nights in New York City.

Then, almost at once, it seemed like the entire March calendars of musicians across the country were wiped clean. Within hours Wednesday, thousands of dollars in expected income vanished.

"My schedule for the next few months has been completely decimated," said Seth Kibel, a woodwind player in the D.C. area who plays at swing dances and retirement homes — which he says were the first gigs to go."

Full article at the link above.
 
"Hundreds of millions of dollars" -- Broadway.

[ Ok, ok, yes, I get it; it's framed in the view of individual gig performers; wasn't minimizing that. ]
 
"Hundreds of millions of dollars" -- Broadway.

[ Ok, ok, yes, I get it; it's framed in the view of individual gig performers; wasn't minimizing that. ]
Musical theater touring is a roughly $1.4b/annual industry by itself. TV and film production inject $48b into *local economies*. Concert touring is $16b. Almost 100% of the workers are "gig economy" workers.

But the impact is on those who make $50 a show, too. Playing for the old folks home, paid church soloists, pretty much anyone in the performing arts or live entertainment at the local/regional level. Little foot traffic, can't even busk.

Covid-19 is havoc (in both biology and money) for anyone whose income is derived from amusing the masses.
 
Feld has postponed almost all productions. We're on an entirely case-by-case and day-by-day basic right now. I'm lucky I already had about 2 months of the show off.
 
110,000 people work in the film, TV, theater, music businesses in the NYC area alone. Most ?, many out of work currently. L.A. is around 125,000 or so ?, Gotta wonder if the state(s) unemployment account can handle that many ?
 
I expect the central banks will just print money to maintain liquidity in the system. The US government is already operating with a trillion dollar deficit so what's another few billion to prop up the unemployment account.
 
And if anyone needed confirmation that they called it right?

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Well in here in Australia (200 cases) we have had some major events canclled. We have just got home from Melbourne where we saw Come From Away (was closing on Saturday but now today Sunday), Shrek (I have not seen an announcement yet) and Billy Elliot (again no announcement)
I had a shift cancelled for a pre rig but I think that is unrelated because they have changed the lighting sched to fit our standard plot.
I am ok with work because my main job is in aged care and not in tech but I do feel for those who rely on tech for their bread and butter income.
Thinking of all who are out of work because of this virus.

Regards
Geoff
 

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