Hi, I'm Jeff Rea, your host for Economic Outlook.

Welcome to our show, where each week we take a deep dove into the regional economy and the people, the companies, the communities and the projects that are helping our region grow.

The covid pandemic impacted every industry, but likely none as significantly as the arts community.

Today, we'll take a closer look at how the arts have navigated this challenging year, what actions they've taken to help survive and how they plan to emerge.

Post pandemic looks coming up on economic outlook.

The arts are integral to the social, civic and economic well-being and vitality of our nation, state and region.

But arts and culture have experienced significant economic setbacks from covid-19 across the spectrum of artistic and creative endeavors.

Restrictions on gatherings, changes in consumer behavior and severe unemployment have taken a devastating toll on this sector.

Join me today for a conversation about how those entities have navigated this past year and how they're ready to emerge post pandemic.

Our Aaron Nichols, the executive director of South Bend Civic Theater, Julie Hershberger, the owner and operator of Ignition Music Garage, and Craig Gibson, the executive artistic director at Premier Arts.

Just one other note before we get started here at WNIT.

We're respecting social distancing and as such have both our hosts and our guests joining us today virtually instead of in person.

Guys, thank you for joining me.

I really appreciate the chance to sit down with each of you and kind of have an important conversation today.

My pleasure.

Thank you.

So just maybe to help frame the conversation a little bit first for those who are unfamiliar with that sort of maybe who you are or what you do, how about it?

We'll just go around real quick with a just a quick introduction.

So, Aaron, let me come your way for just somebody who doesn't know South Bend Civic.

What is South Bend Civic Sure South Bend Civic Theater is a community theater based here downtown South Bend.

We have a beautiful 100 year old historic building right here on Main Street.

We've been in operations for over about about sixty four years now.

And, you know, we serve over twenty thousand patrons a year.

We have about eight hundred volunteers every year and we produce between 12 and 14 productions each year in twenty nineteen.

Before the crisis, we had over two hundred events in that calendar year.

So we're, we're a very busy downtown.

We I call it kind of an anchor cultural organization here in South Bend.

Great.

Julie, come your way.

So those that are unfamiliar with the ignition garage, tell us a little bit about what it is you do over there.

Hi, so we have kind of multifaceted we have retail shop that sells vinyl is cassette tapes, record players, and then by evening we have live performances.

So we were lucky enough to at least have the retail shop to help support us after the shows were canceled or postponed.

But for the most part, we're just a nice hub for musicians that travel.

And we do some local shows as well, so great, good.

Thank you, Julie.

Look forward to hearing more about your story and let me come your way.

Certainly, we've seen and heard a little bit about premier arts, but for those who aren't familiar with it, help us understand what what you do over there.

So we're the resident theater in the beautiful historic learner theater in downtown Elkhart.

And so we live here and are able to produce out of the learner.

And so.

Do probably 10 shows a year that are really surrounded around a family Experience and during the pandemic, we didn't stop working one day, which is kind of crazy, and it pivoted and took a lot of our performances outside.

Never laid anyone off, were really.

Well, situated in that moment, to have a little financial cushion and that could keep us going, and now we're back to normal.

Everybody uses air quotes that the normal, right.

So we're back to normal for the summer and hopefully beyond.

Great.

Well, thank you, Craig.

And look for the chat in a little bit more about that here.

And I want to come your way, just talk a little bit about just just the arts in general.

And as we talked on other shows with other industries about how they've been impacted by the pandemic.

So you mentioned, for example, doing two hundred different things over the course of the year.

Take us back to March of last year when when when things are going really well.

You've put your plan together for the year and all of a sudden this thing called a global pandemic comes on board.

Tell us tell us what's thinking and what you go through when this happens.

Sure.

And I think hindsight's 20, 20 as far as that goes, because when we heard global pandemic, I don't think any of us knew what that was going to mean.

A lot of us thought a week or two, maybe a month, but then we'll get back to normal.

But I think as we got more and more through March into April, we had just finished a very successful run of an August Wilson play with a lot of educational touring and things like that.

And we had an event on a Thursday night and we were like, OK, what what happens tomorrow?

What what are we going to have to do to to prepare for this?

And we had just started contracting some New York and Chicago actors for our production of West Side Story.

That was going to be in like April, May and.

Everything just ground to a stop without really the certainty of when it was going to come back, and I think when you talk about the arts, it's important to to distinguish a little bit between the performing arts and the visual arts, because the performing arts is you're performing in front of an audience and that interaction is essential to what the the performance is.

So the performing arts, when distancing and masking and quarantine and all of those things are happening there.

You can't perform in front of an audience.

And that is kind of a really disturbing reality that you have to navigate.

So we've again, Craig was talking about virtual events, trying to do that kind of stuff.

But at least now in hindsight, that's really not essentially what we do.

And so we found talking economically because that's what this program is about.

You know, we were losing money on virtual programing because it's there's screen fatigue.

There's there's just that acknowledgment that what we do isn't perfectly replicated when there's not that dynamic of a live audience that has really impacted.

For now, 15 months that our whole business model.

And so in hindsight, we know I don't think anyone would have anticipated, except maybe an epidemiologist who understands how global pandemics work, but I thought six months and then I thought nine months.

And then I thought, oh, my God, when we when we get to twenty, twenty one, everything will get better.

But I think that was just all us trying to feel better about it.

And I've said to a lot of people.

Twenty, twenty one is harder than twenty twenty because we have to restart something that has stopped.

And now that the CDC has given us new guidelines, I think it is going to be easier now to resume or at least restart, resurrect.

However you want to call that the performing arts roundabout answer.

But that's kind of how we've been navigating.

That's great.

Julie, I want to come your way, because much like Erin and Craig both indicated, you've got to have people come through your door.

And so you you need them in two different ways, right?

You need your retail store to have customers.

And most retail was significant, limited by the pandemic.

But you also need people to come watch the kind of the performing arts piece.

Let's talk a little bit about how how you navigated those first few months there.

Well, the first few months, we were completely shut down, so I started doing appointments and thank God for the local community here and Goshen Michiana area.

I've had a lot of people support us in other ways.

We even got a small five thousand dollar donation given to us by a local couple, which was very much appreciated.

We I really hate to say that retail has actually been really great for us during the pandemic.

I think a lot of people were staying home, listening to music, listening to vinyl.

That really helped us out.

We're really grateful for that.

But it really resonates with something that Aaron just said, about two thousand twenty one being harder than two thousand this year, being harder than two thousand twenty.

Is now we have people who are fatigued maybe or a little maybe shy about getting back to coming to shows, are unsure what restrictions are going to be in place.

So I'm I am nervous to get back to shows just because of the last year and a half and what everybody's been through, losing family members myself.

So.

I'm also really excited, I miss my music, I miss my performances, I miss interacting with musicians and music appreciator, so we'll just have to see what happens.

Yeah.

Craig, I want to follow up with what Julie was talking there about.

Consumer behaviors obviously changing.

We all get used to doing some things differently.

What are you anticipating this year on the consumer side with that behavior?

Is there sort of pent up demand and people are going to rush out and want to, again, enjoy the performing arts?

Do you think it's it's a slow open as people are sort of getting used to being back around other people?

What's your prediction on that?

Prediction those are always dangerous.

I do.

Throughout the whole pandemic, I kept hoping or feeling as though when things open again that there would be this new renaissance of people hungry for theater and hungry for communion, if you will, in the with others.

And so one of the things that we did was we looked at our history and we chose the highest grossing premiere art show ever, which is Greece, which is what we're doing this summer.

So we're hoping that that.

You know, lightning strikes twice with that and that people and what we're seeing so far is that people are really now that the CDC has lifted the local health department, has lifted all restrictions at the learner, we were in a pod situation which was hard to navigate, hard to understand.

You weren't very happy because you weren't your regular seat.

But now it's wide open and vaccinated.

Folks can come unmasked.

And so we're getting a lot of real positive feedback about that.

And and so we're hopeful that the summer and beyond is no more successful than ever because people really want it.

But, Craig, I want to stay with you for a quick second to and just follow up, because you mentioned in the opening when we were chatting about you did what you could to be open, to continue to provide a place to shift, pivot, to maybe expand a little bit on some of those things and the precautions, the things you did to try to keep keep patrons coming and what patrons comfort was in terms of coming in and experiencing live, live theater tours when the when everything kind of shut down.

We had just finished a very successful production of Shrek the Musical.

And instantly within the two days of the schools going virtual and all of that, we shifted all of our educational programing online and offered free enrichment segments every day for school aged children.

Our costume shop went into mask making mode.

And so we had we farmed out fabric and supplies and had people all over the county making masks for the hospitals.

And then we thought, well, we can't we can't stop.

We've got to keep going.

But how do you do that?

And so we were lucky enough to partner with the Westfield Garden here in Elkhart and took all of our programing outside.

It just so happened that on the schedule was Malana and Mamma Mia!

Both shows fit perfectly in a natural outdoor landscape.

And so.

Though we could see I think they see like six hundred people in that garden in normal times, we limited it to two hundred and fifty and did more performances and so people could spread out, they could feel free to wear a mask or not because they were outside.

And so, you know, so we stopped in March and that was like June, July, August.

And so by then people were really hungry for live theater.

And so our numbers were really pretty good, not normal by any stretch of the imagination.

But the audience was maybe the most appreciative audience we've ever had just because it was finally just a little taste of what they remembered and what they had missed.

So we were lucky to have that partner.

A beautiful setting and well filled is gorgeous.

If you've not been there, you need to.

And so, no, we didn't make quite as much money as as typical.

We could still kind of keep going Aaron I want to come back your way and want to chat.

Maybe some of the economics when I read.

And I don't pretend to understand how theaters operate, but when I'm looking a little bit at at the performing arts, it sounds like a big portion of revenue normally comes from patrons walking through the door and buying a ticket to see the event.

And obviously some comes from from grants or generous donors or other things.

So so without having to go into specific financial details, I'm not asking that.

But help us just understand the economics of this and why, like no live performances, for example, has such a devastating impact and what you did to try to help replace that revenue.

Yeah, I mean, we we handled it differently than premier arts because we were in a position that we actually did furlough for about five months.

And we did that just because we weren't producing and that producing income was what was going to keep our payroll.

We operate usually around fifty five.

Forty five, fifty five being contributing income, contributed income and forty five being earned income in a year like twenty twenty.

That was more like ninety ten where there was a lot of contributed income.

And I just want to do a shout out to all of our donors and sponsors and patrons and all of the supporters of the Civic that really did go the extra mile in a year that they knew that we were suffering and and help that and also PPP the payroll protection plan allowed us to keep our staff on for another two months as we were kind of visioning forward for, like I said, hindsight.

Twenty twenty.

We thought we were going to be able to do a lot of events at the end of the year.

We just needed to struggle forward.

So, you know, we kept everybody, even though we weren't producing until the end of June.

And then we found from the numbers we were looking at that there was just too much risk to continue producing more because of our our of our volunteers not wanting to put them at risk, the performers, then the patrons.

So I guess that fifty five, forty five to ninety ten, as far as a split of where the revenue was coming from is is a huge impact.

Know, we did get some additional help from the Indiana Arts Commission, so shout out to them, shout out to our community foundation here in St. Joseph County.

I know Crank who gets funding I'm sure from the L.A. County Community Foundation.

So a lot of additional contributions as as opposed to patronage.

And now that we're getting back to a busy summer, you know, we're getting back to outdoor performances now just in a couple of weeks in Mishawaka and then again in the parks in South Bend as well.

We hope that that revenue will start to come back to those levels, those twenty, twenty levels.

As far as best practice, I would love our organization to eventually come to a 60 40 where 60 percent contributed and 40 percent earned.

You know, I know that there's some organizations that are like 80, 20, and that's how they that's how they like to be.

They're incredibly endowed.

They're incredibly supported by grants and federal support and and large donors.

You know, I think I think 60 40 for the Civic at least, is where we eventually want to be.

Do they want to come your way because I'm thinking about the folks that are doing live music in your venue.

Obviously they're reliant that my guess is there more of an independent contractors sort of thing?

Not it not employees relying, many of them relying on on on these performances to to make a living.

Talk to us a little bit about just sort of the artists that are that are part of the activity there and what they've done to adapt to this last year.

Well, we started off thinking maybe we should do some live streaming about just didn't we didn't have the equipment to really pull that off without investing more money.

That wasn't really a position we were in at the time.

Most of the musicians that come through our our business, they're touring their national touring acts.

So a lot of people have had to do their own life streams or I really I don't know.

Some of them had to even get get real jobs, as their parents would say.

So my main goal for admission was that we would make it through and be able to give them a place to play when this was over.

So I it makes me sad to think about the places that didn't make it.

But I'm happy that we're still here and we are going to be able to get them back on the payroll, so to speak, so to speak.

So, Julie, I want to stay with you.

Just one other thought on.

So, you know, as we talk to some other industries they've talked about, the pandemic maybe has caused some people that industry to to choose another career and profession and maybe never come back.

And let's say you're working in hospitality and you didn't want to work in an industry maybe that was fragile.

Do you think will this have a long term impact on musicians?

Will some of them have left the industry and decided to get that real job, or is there hope that they'll they'll come back to this as we're getting back to normal here?

I actually just talked to one of those people yesterday.

And though they are optimistic about the future, they for right now are taking some time to reflect on their own lives.

And I'm sure they're not alone.

I'm sure there are a lot of people doing that right now.

And the same sense I would like to think that there are a lot of people that were stuck at home making a ton of music and able to maybe be more creative or have more time than they would have otherwise.

So hopefully there'll be some more emerging artists coming as well.

Great Craig, one of our last five minutes or so here.

I want to come your way and I want to talk a little bit about I don't know if lessons learned is the right question or whatever, but but will will what you've gone through this last year cause you to to act differently going forward?

Will you have learned lessons that, you know, how will this change or maybe won't your industry going forward?

But yeah, I mean, everybody's been changed by the pandemic in the social things that have been going on, the artists are kind of called on to to be a mere civil for society.

And so I think that what you're going to see is a lot more diverse amounts of work from diverse populations and a new way of thinking.

We've always had kind of a colorblind casting situation at Premier Arts, and I know South Bend Civic is a leader in diversity as well.

And so opening our minds to different how things can can be not the way they always were.

I think we have a license to do that.

And in a renaissance, which I'm still predicting that that's going to be maybe more prevalent than ever and giving people opportunities to shine.

And we're looking at upping our program.

Doing a lot more work and encouraging a lot more people to spark that creative spirit within them.

You asked Julie about people who maybe hung up their guitar during the pandemic.

I think once music and theater and dance are in, you might give it a rest, but it never goes away.

And so those people will be back on the boards before you know it.

Great, thanks, thanks, Craig.

Aaron, I want to ask a similar question.

You've worked to pivot and such and and react in our planning.

This emergence as the pandemic is is going away.

How will South Bend Civic different going forward?

I agree a lot with Craig that that I really do feel like just like in the 1918 pandemic that turned into the roaring 20s, you know, I do feel like that same kind of cultural just upheaval, wonderful explosion is going to happen as far as how we're going to be different.

You know, I've been able to kind of shift my my staffing around a bit because, you know, as as people either have found other opportunities during the furlough or as people have have moved or started new chapters, I'll be kind of reworking what my people can do and how we can support our volunteers a little better.

We just posted a director of production position, full time executive position.

So I think you will see more opportunity in the arts, I hope, as people start hiring again, because I think that's important as again, an economic program, the arts are responsible for a lot of jobs.

And just like in the RV industry, it's not just the job itself, but it's the jobs that trickle down from from those organizations and from the activities that that are created by those organizations, whether it be restaurants or entertainment or shopping and all those kind of things.

Right.

I think to Craig's point to telling.

Telling our cities stories in a more proactive way, you know, we we we are the South Bend Civic Theater.

So I think in that name we have a mandate to tell South Bend stories or stories that are resonant to South Bend population.

And I'm really working hard to to try to do that.

And one of the things I I've been working on to is, is not just telling stories grounded on trauma, and especially after we've all gone through collective trauma, finding stories that celebrate joy and celebrate underrepresented joy is really important to to our organization as well.

And that was a bit of a wake up call to say if you're only telling stories of trauma, you're almost continuing the problems that already exist.

So there's a lot of work to be done.

And I think that that that requires organizations to diversify every part of their organization, not just the stage, but your board, your staff, everyone.

Julie, about 30 seconds, what should people know about this summer and coming to Ignition Garage?

I'm so happy you asked.

We just finalized our first show back.

It's going to be July 20th.

So it's just right around the corner for us.

We have a 14 shows to get rescheduled, so we're going to be pretty busy.

So most of it probably in the fall, but I'm just really excited to get back to it.

Great.

Well, thanks.

We'll look forward to getting people out there.

How about you, Craig?

What, 30 seconds?

What should folks expect this summer from from Preimer Arts?

We have a lullaby, a Broadway musical revue featuring great music from Broadway in June, late June and in July.

We have Greece and all youth production of Greece, as well as two productions of Greece.

And lots of things to look forward to here from your website.

Get your tickets Right and Aaron I'll give you the last word about 30 seconds on what to expect this summer at South Bend said it.

Sure, we got three months of outdoor productions, June in Mishawaka at Central Park, SpongeBob Square Pants or the SpongeBob musical, as it's called July.

We're doing Xanadu, the musical at Howard Park here in South Bend, which is a great comedy musical.

And then finally in August, we're doing a new play called Cry It Out about young mothers trying to navigate the world of of new motherhood.

It's a kind of comic show that's going to be an Leeper Park.

there in the north side of downtown.

So three shows, three months, all outdoors to be great.

Great.

Well, thank you, all three of you, for the great work you're doing and performing arts.

The three great folks to have in our community.

Appreciate it.

And we look forward to enjoying those great events this summer.

Thanks for coming today to talk a little bit about all that.

So that's it for our show today, so thank you for watching at WNIT or listening to our podcast to watch this episode again.

And of our past episodes, you can find Economic Outlook at WNIT.org or find our podcast on most major podcast platforms.

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