School's Out For Summer, School's Out Forever
/by Chad Williams
It's early August and my wife and I just made the ultimate parental choice - whether to send our kids back to school in September or keep them home. This 100% affects our puppetry company.
Since the DOE in New York State closed schools in May, there has been a looming uncertainty about whether or not schools in our state would reopen in September. This question has taken over our country's national narrative as of late - news broadcasts are either about virus statistics, actions taken by our Federal government, and whether or not schools will open (plus one feel-good story, every newscast has to end on a positive note). Even if they do open, will they be safe? How many children, teachers, and parents will die before they close them again?
All of this relates to our professional life as puppeteers. We run a mobile children's theater that pre-COVID set up in school classrooms, libraries, theaters- anywhere where kids and families congregated, we were there. For us, schools opening again is like a litmus test for whether or not we would be able at all to safely enter the spaces where our target demographic hangs out. If teachers can safely be in classrooms with masks on for socially distanced kids, maybe a puppeteer or a teaching artist could too.
Since March, puppeteers, and performers have died from COVID-19, some have been extremely ill for weeks and others have gotten better but still suffer lasting damage. This virus is no joke - we experienced it firsthand as our family stayed indoors for 80 days in NYC as 20,000 of our neighbors died horrible deaths. Our neighbor, whose little girl attended the school across the street, died right before Mother's Day.
We left the city and moved out to the country. Compared to some, we left late - others watched us go with no option but to stay. It is both privilege and luck that my white, middle-class parents have a place for our family to crash and that they are both still alive. An amazing performing arts center in my hometown welcomed us and we set up a streaming studio in a basement fallout shelter. We've been streaming shows and workshops all Summer and have received many heartfelt messages of thanks for helping kids and families get through hard times.
For many months, we heard that children did not transmit the virus, weren't as affected, etc, etc. Now as we get closer to schools possibly reopening, science is showing that the opposite is true. Our #1 job as parents, an instinctual 'mama and papa bear' type feeling, is to protect our kids. While everyone in the world has different opinions (or financial realities) about whether or not they will send their kids back to school next month, our personal choice has become completely clear.
We are doubling down on streaming puppet shows and teaching kids using puppetry. Will there be any money in it? Arts are always the first to be cut from budgets when times are tight (in New York City, school budgets for 2020-21were cut by 3%). We'll keep hustling, trying our best to pivot again and again to survive.
10 years ago when we first began our puppet company, many of our peers were still reeling from the 2008 depression. The big lesson we gained from listening to the older generation (those whose gigs were similarly obliterated by arts funding drying up and school budgets being cut) was to always diversify markets, always pivot, always hustle, never ever ever get complacent. We have to stay hungry no matter what, always improve, always keep going! It's both a marathon AND a sprint. Not everyone is going to make it to the finish line where a vaccinated public is excited to go sit in a theater again. You have to survive.
Where will you be in 1 month? 6 months? 1 year? I asked this question to hundreds of puppeteers in streaming workshops over Zoom. It's time to think long-term. September is coming, but what about January? When it has been 1 full year since this collective nightmare began, I hope we will all look back with pride at what we were able to accomplish instead of feeling regret about what we lost.
