April 21, 2020
Making the best of these Quarantine Times! The weather’s been perfect the last few days and now today’s another beauty as geese honk and splash around the riverside drenched in sun. We are into our sixth week of stay-at-home! Our Broadway Series preproduction work is moving onward and upward – yet with “the unknown” hovering over the best laid plans, the upside is that we are learning more about ourselves and more meaningful communication. So grateful for the calls, video chats, emails and texts, while even the work related interactions are a check-in with everyone being ok. We keep in touch laughing hard on social media about the change in our lives, and being seriously inspired by the work we have to do and the resonance it now has.
In continuing service to our community, Paramount School of the Arts is hosting Master Classes on Mondays at 5PM on Facebook. Check out Matt Silar’s presentation just last evening on the College Audition Process – a remarkably expert and comprehensive talk complete with charts and outlines. And tune in for my segment next week on the topic of Directing.
Saturday night’s “Connection: A Social Media Concert” on Facebook was extraordinary once again! Go see and hear how singer/songwriters, solo or with their family and friends, composed songs of gratitude for essential workers making a difference in our daily lives. (You’ll love seeing some of the artists from our casts in past productions!) Tomorrow at midnight is the deadline for submissions for this week’s theme: perform an original song or dance connecting you to the passage of time.
What will the future hold? When will we gather to make art? When will we gather to attend it? All we know is that we believe in our humanity and the progress of tomorrow.
With the circumstances in which we now live – the sameness of our days, the rut, the monotony – how differently time passes. We joke about not knowing which day of the week it is, as if we relive the same day over and over. This so inspires how we examine that warp in time in next season’s Groundhog Day at Paramount. We may well see ourselves more in this story than ever before. For that matter, with the entire season – Rock of Ages, Cinderella, Ragtime, and Kinky Boots – will be an experience full of unexpected realizations and reflections of who we are now, who we have become.
Full of thanks for the work we have, and the good it brings from our collaborations, I think on our audience and patrons – at their best attending the Paramount! What will the future hold? When will we gather to make art? When will we gather to attend it? All we know is that we believe in our humanity and the progress of tomorrow. Nothing in history has ever held us back. That is Faith. We will find a way. That is Hope. And there is so much anticipation for being all together again – that is Love.
Love & Thanks,
Jim
