Indy Digest: June 19, 2023
The pandemic altered—and continues to alter—the lives of many people, in ways we’re just beginning to understand.
Just ask people who produce theatrical productions.
Late last week, one of Southern California’s venerable theater venues was shuttered indefinitely. The Los Angeles Times reports:
When Center Theatre Group on Thursday announced that it was indefinitely pausing shows at the Mark Taper Forum—the creative beating heart of one of the country’s largest regional companies—a sense of deep sadness and acute anxiety resonate with theater leaders across the country.
Center Theatre Group might be calling this a “pause,” many said, but that word is a euphemism for a closure—what the entire theater ecosystem had to endure when the COVID shutdowns hit in March 2020. The hard lesson learned—during closures that in some cases lasted close to two years—is that audiences won’t quickly return in nearly the numbers needed to make budgets.
The result is a painful, and unprecedented, contraction of regional theaters nationwide. Vibrant, essential leaders of the industry including New York’s Public Theater, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Dallas Theater Center and San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater, among many others, are experiencing various levels of pain—fighting to keep doors open despite dwindling ticket sales, increased production costs and hesitant, recession-wary donors. The result: drastic cuts to programming, layoffs, candid pleas to subscribers about an industry-wide emergency and, in L.A., the indefinite shutdown of what for decades has been the city’s most prominent and important home for drama.
The good news is that our local theaters and theater companies seem to be faring better than most. Two Palm Springs-based companies (where the Independent has been a media sponsor for years), Dezart Performs and Desert Ensemble Theatre Company, told supporters their 2022-2023 seasons were among their best ever. The McCallum Theatre’s 2022-2023 season was its second-best ever in terms of ticket sales, CEO Mitch Gershenfeld told me a couple months back.
That said, these theaters all have built-in advantages. It’s a lot easier to sell enough tickets in smaller venues like the Palm Springs Woman’s Club (Dezart) and the Palm Springs Cultural Center (Desert Ensemble) than, say, the 739-seat Mark Taper Forum. The McCallum has a loyal and diverse customer base due, in part, to the sheer variety of productions it hosts.
All of this made me think back to a story Kevin Fitzgerald wrote for the Independent a few months ago, about older adults who have not been as socially active since the shutdowns. This was the topic of a panel discussion at the Cal State San Bernardino-Palm Desert campus, organized by the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, where nationwide attendance is down about 30 percent compared to pre-pandemic times.
“Recently we had an event here, and I asked one of our former OLLI members why she hadn’t come back to campus,” said Angela Allen, OLLI’s executive director, during the panel discussion. “… She said, ‘You know, Angela, it’s just so hard to come. And it was just so easy to stay home.’ So all of these things made me start thinking: Is there something going on here? Is there some kind of a syndrome, a group of symptoms that are going on? There’s fear, depression and loneliness that seem to be (affecting) our senior population.”
Most of us, more or less, have fully returned to life as we knew it before the pandemic. But not all of us have—and society is feeling the impact.
—Jimmy Boegle
From the Independent
The Girl Club: Meet Aneka Brown, a Badass Dancer, Fashion Designer and Event Producer
By Kay Kudukis
June 16th, 2023
Meet Aneka Brown, someone working to raise the cultural and historical awareness of African Americans in our community with fun, educational events.
Fun ‘Flash’: Supergirl, Michael Keaton’s Return Make the Latest DC Film a Good Time
By Bob Grimm
June 19th, 2023
The Flash a vacuous but certainly fun yarn that shines mostly due to the presence of Michael Keaton, who makes you wish he never took off the cowl.
Vine Social: If You Think All California Chardonnays Taste the Same, You’re Very, Very Wrong
By Katie Finn
June 19th, 2023
Chardonnay is a true chameleon of a grape. The reason it was chosen as the white grape of Burgundy is because of its ability to absorb and highlight where it’s grown.
More News
• Today is Juneteenth. NPR looks at the history of the holiday, and what’s happened since it became a federal holiday in 2021: “As the holiday has grown in popularity, many Black people have celebrated the idea that African-American history would be more widely recognized as part of the fabric of the United States. ‘As a Black person, it means a lot to me to celebrate everybody who was free because it’s like so many people don’t know,’ said Precious Williams, a Dallas native who was visiting D.C. over the holiday weekend. … But there are also concerns that corporate money-grabs taking advantage of the day could potentially weaken the gravity of such a historic event. … Just last year, big-box retailers like Walmart came under fire for a spread of Juneteenth-themed products deemed tasteless and appropriative by many. And politically, the holiday has been weaponized by some Republicans as part of an ongoing culture war that claims truthful acknowledgments of race and racism are a ploy to demonize white Americans. Despite these controversies, for many Monday is an opportunity to reflect on America and its history, as well as consider what the future might hold.”
• Robert Victor, the Independent’s resident astronomer, encourages you to get outside and look at the evening skies for some cool sights—and to join him on Wednesday for a special viewing. He says: “In the early evening tonight, Monday, June 19 (if you’re not too close to the San Jacinto Mountains), and again on Tuesday, look low in the west-northwest for a thin crescent moon to the lower right of what seems to be a spectacularly brilliant ‘star’—actually the planet Venus. Early on Wednesday evening, June 21, sky watchers will enjoy an exceptionally beautiful pairing of Venus with the four-day-old crescent moon close to its upper right. I will host a viewing from the pedestrians-only bridge over Tahquitz Creek, at Camino Real between North and South Riverside Drives (in Palm Springs). The bridge is now a very pleasant environment, with abundant water flowing underneath from snowmelt at higher elevations, and frogs calling. Wednesday’s viewing will begin at 8:45 p.m., before Venus gets too low for a good look of its fat crescent, currently 39 percent full, compared to moon’s 14 percent. Clear skies are expected for Wednesday evening, but in the event of cloudy skies, the viewing session will be rescheduled for Thursday.”
• It’s Shortfest time! The week-long film-short fiesta kicks off tomorrow (Tuesday) at the Palm Springs Cultural Center. From a news release: “The festival will screen 50 curated programs showcasing 299 films including 53 world premieres, 10 international premieres, 33 North American premieres and 18 U.S. premieres. Additionally, the ShortFest Forum will also take place June 23-25 bringing together festival filmmakers, prominent industry representatives and others for a series of panels, roundtables and meetings covering a wide range of emerging trends and new practices in the global film community.” Find out more at www.psfilmfest.org.
• A local hiker was rescued earlier today after being bitten by a snake. City News Service, via NBC Palm Springs, reports: “Fire crews responded around 8:40 a.m. Monday to the Bump and Grind Hiking Trail in Rancho Mirage to the report of the disabled hiker in a difficult to reach area, according to the Riverside County Fire Department. ‘Firefighters made access into location on UTV (utility terrain vehicles) and are bringing (the) patient down to awaiting ground ambulance to be transported to area hospital (with) minor injuries,’ Riverside County fire officials wrote in a statement.” This would be a good time to refer you to Theresa Sama’s most recent hiking piece, headlined “It’s Rattlesnake Season—and We Can Expect to See a Lot of Them This Year.“ Be careful out there, folks!
• Gov. Gavin Newsom, what are you doing?! The Associated Press, via ABC7 News Los Angeles, reports: “California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration has proposed an end to public disclosure of investigations of abusive and corrupt police officers, handing the responsibility instead to local agencies in an effort to help cover an estimated $31.5 billion budget deficit. The proposal, part of the governor’s budget package that he is still negotiating with the Legislature, has prompted strong criticism from a coalition of criminal justice and press freedom groups, which spent years pushing for the disclosure rules that were part of a landmark law Newsom signed in 2021. The law allows the state Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training to investigate and decertify police officers for misconduct, such as use of excessive force, sexual assault and dishonesty. It requires the commission to make public the records of decertification cases. The Newsom administration now wants to get rid of that transparency element. The commission says the public could still get the records from police departments. But advocates say local police departments often resist releasing that information.”
• The Washington Post looks at the case of a worker suing Starbucks, alleging that she lost her job because she organized a successful unionization effort. While Lexi Rizzo’s story was interesting, the thing about the piece that I found most fascinating is the lengths Starbucks is going to in order to foil unionization drives. A taste: “In the last year, judges have ruled that Starbucks violated U.S. labor laws more than 130 times across six states, among the most of any private employer nationwide. The rulings found that Starbucks retaliated against union supporters by surveilling them at work, firing them and promising them improved pay and benefits if they rejected the organizing campaign. … (After Rizzo helped organize a unionization election), the company responded by doubling the number of employees at her store to more than 40 in an attempt to dilute the voting pool, according to the judge’s ruling in the Buffalo case. Starbucks also flooded the Buffalo market with dozens of managers from around the country. In Rizzo’s store the extra bosses donned headsets—even when they weren’t serving customers—so that they could monitor the workers’ conversations, the judge found.”
• And finally … in other labor news, workers at UPS are preparing to strike, and that could become a very big deal. CNN reports: “A UPS strike by 185,000 workers 25 years ago brought the logistics giant’s operations to a standstill. The 15-day strike slashed package deliveries, overwhelmed the US Postal Service and FedEx, and hurt businesses across the United States. Now, more than 340,000 UPS workers represented by the Teamsters union are threatening to strike over pay, hours and working conditions if there is no agreement in contract talks between the company and the union. If a strike takes place, it would be the largest single-employer strike in U.S. history. The work stoppage would also kick off as shoppers head into the back-to-school season and retailers prepare for the peak holiday stretch later in the year.”
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