I had contracts working in an after school drama program, where we were doing Beauty and the Beast. We’d only had two rehearsals and they just said they’re canceling school. We’ll let you know if we have summer opportunities or fall opportunities. I’m still waiting to hear back from that company. 

Then I was the company that I’m an arts administrator for and sometimes I teach for, we transitioned to online. We had maybe three weeks where we didn’t know what was happening. By that time, so many places had gone online and we were kind of behind the curve on this one. But we’re just like, let’s just research; let’s do it really well, try to make what we have unique and try to make it exciting. We just put it out there and we have been super overwhelmed by how much families have loved our classes to the point where we had to extend summer because because parents were just like, are there more classes? And still parents are like, we want more online classes. If I had to pinpoint one thing that parents superduper loved, it’s the stories that we create when we’re in class. We never thought this was going to work. But we learn something new every class. We’ve how many classes, probably like 50 and I would say at least half of them were completely sold out. Then maybe another third close to full.

So the way that the programs are paid for is grant funded. If I’m doing an in school class and I’m the theater coming into a regular classroom, nine times out of ten that’s grant funded. So a lot of theater companies do this who have some type of education department or academy. Schools each year get grants and they have to use that grant on something specific, some type of extracurricular. So theater companies make money by being that option. The school doesn’t actually have to pay for it. Parents want to pay for it. Some kind of government grant will pay for our company to come in and do things, not just acting classes but I even work. One of the companies I work for, they do a show; they go into a cafeteria and perform. A lot of times I’m paid as an independent contractor. I also do programs where parents pay, they pay the company, and then the company uses a portion of that tuition to pay me. 

When the two shows were canceled, the other jobs ramped up. The really cool thing about it was we got the PPP grant and we were actually able to hire more teaching artists. In fact, we had to because we had to use a portion of that grant to pay teaching artists. It was really bizarre, it was totally a God thing. Usually I’m one of the lower people in the company because I’m a part time employee. But in the summer, I go full time. I actually started making more money because of the PPP grant and so I’ve been making much more money since Covid happened than I did before through this one company. And they keep extending my full time pay. So I’m just letting myself be grateful. I feel bad that so many artists have lost work, but I feel really well taken care of by my company.