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This summer has surpassed all expectations for the arts and entertainment scene in Hampton Roads. The carnage is far beyond what we feared when the coronavirus got rolling.
Gov. Ralph Northam first applied the tourniquet in March, which included banning all entertainment services as part of the effort to restrict activities and limit the spread of the virus. First, single performances fell victim. Then, as arts groups saw that things were not improving, they began announcing the end of entire seasons. The Virginia Stage Company, Virginia Opera, Virginia Symphony Orchestra, Generic Theater, and dozens of other groups were cut off at the knees. The Virginia Arts Festival ended almost before it had begun.
Briefly, we thought we might still dance in the sand at Something in the Water. Nope.
We hoped that the contagion would burn off in the summer, and things would ease up.
But the summer concert season evaporated. The festivals dried up. No Harborfest. No Fourth of July spectaculars. Instead, local talents, bless them, looked for creative ways to use technology to stay connected to each other and audiences.
Virginia has been playing rope-a-dope with the virus. That boxing term describes a strategy of leaning against the ropes and covering up in a defensive stance. You wait for your opponent to exhaust himself from throwing ineffective punches. Then you come off the ropes and win the match.
We are against the ropes, dodging and ducking and social distancing — Phase 1, Phase 2, Phase 3, Phase 2.75 — and waiting. But what level of safety are we trying to reach before all restrictions are lifted? Or are we now waiting for a cure for COVID-19? A vaccine? There’s no guarantee those will ever be found. Meanwhile the virus keeps punching.
As summer nears its end, the arts and entertainment community looks toward a fall with no answers to those questions. Restrictions still hamper their ability to function, and there is a whole lot of fear in potential patrons.
Weekend Scoop
The fall arts season will be a shadow of itself.
Lost — those moments when a child looks to the stage and says: “That’s what I’m going to do with my life!”
Lost — that performance where everything comes together for a young artist, and she rises to the next level in her career.
The young couples who bond over unforgettable dates. The established couples who gain vital nourishment from shared passions. The life-altering friendships formed while working in the arts or enjoying a night on the town. The transcendental moments in the presence of great art, and the transcendental moments experienced here by artists. Gone. And never to be recovered.
Lamenting these losses does not equate with minimizing the pain of those who have contracted COVID-19 or have survived someone who died from it. It’s all one dreadful stew.
On the rock band Pink Floyd’s album “The Wall,” there’s a song called “Mother.” It’s about a man who has been left ill-prepared for adulthood by his mother’s smothering attentions. To protect her baby from the world, she helps him build a wall around himself.
I wonder how many people are thinking of the wall we have built to protect us from the coronavirus and are asking — as their arts group or venue hangs by a thread, as their careers wither, as they turn out the lights on their life’s work, as they succumb to depression — “Mother, did it need to be so high?”