DU's Eisner Center director talks keeping the arts alive during year-plus of COVID

The impact of COVID-19 on retail and services businesses, health care and education has been well documented, now over a year into the ongoing pandemic.

But what about the pandemic's effects on the arts?

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Margot Singer, Professor of English, the Director of Creative Writing, and Director of the Eisner Center for the Performing Arts at Denison University, recently addressed that issue.

In a presentation to the Granville Area Chamber of Commerce, Singer explored, “The Importance of the Arts to Denison and the Community,” and detailed the struggles being fought by musicians, actors and visual artists, among others.

“The arts are a special intersection between life on campus, and life in the Village,” Singer said, seeking to address the arts as “a strategic part” of Denison University’s mission, and for the community “as a whole.”

She said that “just three years ago, almost to the day, “the old Ace Morgan Theatre here on College Street came down, giving way to the construction site that is now the Michael D. Eisner Center for the Performing Arts.”

That center opened its doors in the summer of 2019, “and not even eight months later we had to shut the doors and turn off the lights and send the students home,” Singer said, “and nothing, needless to say, has been the same since.”

Singer said, “The job I took on in July was not at all the job I imagined it would be. I think most of you will appreciate that the arts, along with tourism and restaurants are among the hardest hit industries as a result of the pandemic.”

She said, “Around the world, the vast majority of arts organizations had to cancel or indefinitely postpone events. They’re just starting to come back.”

According to a recently conducted survey, more than 60% of working artists were fully unemployed, she said. “And now, even after incredible federal, county and state assistance, 27% of musicians are unemployed; 52% of actors and 55% of dancers are unemployed.”

In non-pandemic times, Singer said, “The nation’s events and culture sector is a $900.19 billion industry that supports 52 million jobs. That’s a larger share, believe it or not, of the economy than sectors such as agriculture and transportation.”

According to Singer, the hardest hit “in that big sector are the fine and performing arts, including the visual arts, music, theater, song and dance.”

That impact has been felt in Columbus, Singer said, and in Licking County.

However, while she said it would be “easy to assume the stages have been empty and the students kind of hunkered down… I’m proud to tell you and I hope you know that the arts are alive and well on campus.”

Singer then outlined some of the ways that has been achieved, including dance students doing so in the course of outdoor classes “in the morning mists. You may have caught the sounds of the jazz ensemble performing on the front steps of the Eisner Center.”

Warmer weather will facilitate more of that outdoor, socially distanced education on campus, Singer predicted: Easels will be set up outside by art students who will paint “en plein air.”

Singer said, “You’ll see lessons going on inside tents” and that performances are going on within the Eisner Center, “albeit with small, socially-distanced audiences wearing masks, but still the energy of a live audience, palpable in the air.”

She said, “Not every college has been able to do this, and I’m really proud that we have been able to keep the arts going this year.”

But Singer acknowledged the pandemic has driven innovation toward those ends, some of which she said, “I hope are here to stay,” particularly in terms of virtual and digital offerings.