I have a secure job, but my vocation - the thing that gets me fired up each week - is acting and the theatre. Through several difficult years it, and my theatre family, have kept me sane and balanced. Now it's completely unavailable in its usual form and I've been feeling the loss keenly.
But the truly wonderful things about Creatives is that they have to keep creating, no matter what. So we've moved all our activities online. I'm a member of a Facebook group of actors, musicians, writers, artists....every week we set a new challenge to keep us engaged and active. We've written and filmed monologues and short plays (filmed in isolation). We've recorded radio plays. We're working on a podcast series....I recently joined "Streamed Shakespeare" and am excited to be preparing some audition recordings. Every week, prestigious theatre companies and artists make recordings of live performances available for free to entertain us in our isolation and raise awareness of the valuable contribution the arts make to our lives.
It saddens me that the Arts - an industry that contributes $111 billion to the Australian economy each year, and which is now keeping so many of us sane through the streaming contributions we're consuming like crazy - has been largely forgotten in terms of support.