09-17-2023 Fall Arts Guide - Flipbook - Page 6
6 The Baltimore Sun | Sunday, September 17, 2023
FALL ARTS PREVIEW
Stevie Walker-Webb, pictured at Lexington Market, is the new artistic director at Baltimore Center Stage. One of his first tasks will be luring back estranged theatergoers. VS DAVIS
Burning
from Page 1
The music man
Can Baltimore Symphony
Orchestra music director Jonathon
Heyward make classical music
cool?
There’s a lot riding on
Heyward’s youthful shoulders.
The 2022 announcement that the
rising star had been appointed
as the next music director of the
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra was greeted with widespread
jubilation locally and headlines
nationally.
Heyward, 31, is the youngest music director of one of
the two-dozen biggest-budget
symphony orchestras in the U.S.
He is the only American. He is
the only chief conductor who is
Black, and just the second Black
person in American history to
hold that position.
But all that hoopla means
that once Heyward ascends the
podium next weekend, he will
be standing in an awfully bright
spotlight.
A lot of people are hoping
Heyward can help the BSO — and
by extension symphonies nationwide — overcome formidable
obstacles.
Aging orchestra audiences
have been particularly hesitant
to return to the concert hall since
COVID-19. Last season, dwindling attendance caused the BSO
to cancel 10 concerts. The field
also has been slow to diversify.
According to a recent report by
the League of American Orchestras, 79% of classical musicians
who performed in 2022-23 were
white.
Those are huge problems.
Heyward’s supporters say they
don’t expect him to perform
miracles at the BSO — then add
that they won’t be surprised if he
does.
The bassoonist Sandra Nikolajevs, who has known Heyward
since he was a teenager, summarized those sentiments succinctly
in an interview earlier this year.
“Maybe,” she said, “Jonathon
can save classical music.”
Jonathon Heyward, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s music director, faces
formidable obstacles, including dwindling attendance since the pandemic.
SACHYN MITAL/THE LINCOLN CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS
The theater director
Can Baltimore Center Stage’s new
artistic director help the company
mount a comeback?
On Oct. 2, Stevie Walker-Webb
will start his new job as Baltimore
Center Stage’s artistic director.
One of his first tasks will be luring
back estranged theatergoers
while continuing to transform
the theater into a more racially
diverse and inclusive space.
Walker-Webb’s predecessor,
Stephanie Ybarra, stepped down
as artistic director in March.
Some Center Stage insiders
thought she put too much focus
on diversity and not enough on
presenting engaging, well-acted
plays. Emotions ran hot, and
fighting words were exchanged
by both sides.
There was a mass resignation of several staff members
and six longtime trustees on the
44-member volunteer board.
Promised donations were
rescinded. Patrons wrote letters
to the editor criticizing the quality of Center Stage productions,
and many didn’t renew subscriptions.
Like Ybarra, Walker-Webb is an
artistic director of color. He has
said he grew up in an economically disadvantaged neighborhood in Texas, and he is as
determined as Ybarra to combat
racial injustice. But he thinks the
best way to do that is to get audiences to smile.
“Shakespeare wrote plays that
made people laugh,” he said.
“They learned in a way that didn’t
villainize them. People want
to be open to new cultures and
perspectives. But they don’t want
to be preached to or judged.”
The screen scene
Will the Maryland Film Festival
return?
When the Maryland Film
Festival was hit last fall by a
double whammy of setbacks, the
announcements had an outsized
impact. It wasn’t merely that a
Baltimore arts institution dating
back to 1999 was threatened; if
the festival were to permanently
close, people feared it would
undermine Baltimore’s claims to
being a major cultural capital.
World-class cities have vibrant
arts scenes, and a showcase of
independent movies is a key
component of a healthy cultural
ecosystem. Practically every
The board of directors for the shuttered Parkway Theatre pledged to devote this year
to devising a sustainable financial model, and members said they hoped to bring back
the Maryland Film Festival in 2024. The Parkway will reopen briefly for a weekend of free
screenings during Artscape. AMY DAVIS/THE BALTIMORE SUN
major city in the U.S. has an
annual film festival; New York
has two.
The first blow fell in November,
when the 25th annual Maryland
Film Festival, set for 2023, was
canceled in an attempt to stem
the financial drain resulting from
the COVID-19 pandemic. The
following month, the film festival’s parent organization, The
Parkway Theatre, laid off staff
and ceased operations indefinitely.
Though the Parkway will
reopen briefly for a weekend of
free screenings during Artscape
next weekend, that programming
is being funded not by the Parkway, according to the festival’s
website, but by the Baltimore
Office of Promotion and the Arts.
The Parkway’s board of directors pledged to devote this year
to devising a sustainable financial
model, and members said they
hoped to bring back the film festival in 2024.
Film Festival executive director
Sandra Gibson wrote in an email
that planning for the 2024 festival
is “well underway” and that the
organization has recently posted
a job listing for a director of festival programming, a position she
hopes to fill this fall.
In the interim, Baltimore’s
public radio station, WYPR-FM
(88.1), stepped into the gap by
founding the inaugural New/
Next Film Festival, which
screened 76 full-length features
and short movies with Maryland
ties in mid-August.
Sam Sessa, WYPR’s director
of community engagement and
events, said they sold 3,000 tickets during the three-day event.
“The response to the festival
flew us away,” Sessa said.
The stage curtain call
Will Baltimore’s small performing
groups prosper or perish in the
post-pandemic world?
A succession of small local
arts groups bit the dust one after
another in 2023, and the question on cultural observers’ minds
is whether the casualties will
continue.
In the past nine months, the
local arts scene has lost Rep
Stage, the Baltimore Chamber Jazz Society, the Sankofa
Dance Theatre and Single Carrot
Theatre.
Some turnover is inevitable, even in strong economic
times. But it’s worrisome to arts
observers that all four of the lost
groups were longtime fixtures of
Baltimore’s cultural scene, with
performing histories ranging
from 15 to 34 years.
At least two — Single Carrot
and the Jazz Society — closed as a
direct result of the pandemic.
Arts administrators say that
federal relief programs kept
many groups afloat during the 18
months when in-person audiences were banned. The real
crisis occurred once the groups
reopened for live performances.
Government aid evaporated,
patrons delayed their return
because they were reluctant to
sit shoulder-to-shoulder with
strangers, and audience levels
at early performances averaged
about a third of their pre-pandemic totals. Last summer, an
Audience Outlook Monitor report
estimated that 20% of former
performing arts patrons might
never return.
What’s more, ticket buyers
seemed to have taken to heart
one of the key lessons of the
pandemic, which is that the
future is impossible to predict.
Subscriptions, which require
a commitment to attend performances that will take place nearly
a year in the future, dropped off
precipitously, depriving performing groups of a reliable revenue
stream to pay for rehearsals, set
design and other expenses of
upcoming productions.
“A lot of people are keeping an
eye on what’s going to happen
with theater,” Genevieve de
Mahy, Single Carrot’s former
artistic director, said in an interview earlier this year. “Theater
is in a really difficult place right
now,” she said. “A lot of the things
that allowed theater to survive
before the pandemic aren’t
happening anymore.”
While de Mahy was talking
specifically about the genre she
knows best, her comments could
apply to all the performing arts.
Kellie Meclearly, left, and Genevieve de Mahy in“Savage/Love”at Single Carrot Theatre, which
closed as a direct result of the pandemic.“A lot of the things that allowed theater to survive
before the pandemic aren’t happening anymore,” de Mahy, Single Carrot’s former artistic
director, said in an interview earlier this year. BRITT OLSEN-ECKER