The Fairmount College of Liberal Arts hosted their ninth installment of their “Perspectives on the Pandemic Part II” series on Wednesday, September 23 . This latest edition brought to attention the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the performing arts and its audiences.

Rodney Miller, the dean of the College of Fine Arts at Wichita State labeled the loss of the events industry as catastrophic.

“They [the events industry] were the first to close down and they will be the last industry to fully open back up,” Miller said. “But what the general public doesn’t understand or appreciate is the magnitude of that closure to the American economy. In Kansas alone, the arts constitute three percent of the state’s gross domestic product. Employing over fifty-thousand Kansans, that represents a 2.5 billion dollar amount in salaries alone.”

In a time when people need the arts more than ever, members of the Fine Arts college are tasked with continuing to teach and mentor students in the arts. During the panel, four special panelists were given the opportunity to speak out: Danette Baker, Professor and Director of Theatre, David MacDonald, Assistant Professor of Music Theory and Composition, Matt Miller, Lighting Designer, and Marissa Santiago, Arts Administrator and Events Producer. Each panelist had their own unique perspective regarding their work amidst a global epidemic.

The Performing Arts are a key piece of Wichita State’s identity. Since the introduction of the Performing Arts, alumni from the Performing Arts college have won many significant awards including Oscars, Emmys, Pullitzers, etc. Since the pandemic forced individuals involved in the arts to cancel all of their events, artists have lost a majority of their potential work. Matt Miller’s experience with these unfortunate circumstances affected his work with “Ballet Idaho”.

“We loaded in our show on a Monday. Many of the people involved in the production had only heard peripherally about this ‘Coronavirus thing’ that was happening overseas, and by that Thursday afternoon we had to cancel our performances,” Miller said.

Months of rehearsals and planning went down the drain for Miller and many others. Miller’s experience with the pandemic reflects the experience of many others throughout the industry.

In Miller’s experience, “Ballet Idaho” performed their show with no audience present and filmed it so audiences could enjoy the show from the comfort and safety of their own home. Ballet Idaho’s new experiment went so well that they have an all-virtual season on the horizon for 2021. This may be a prime example of what the arts will look like within the next few months.

Eventually the virus will begin to recede but the precautions taken by the arts industry may continue to be incorporated, according to Danette Baker.

“I think there’s going to have to be change,” Baker said. “We can’t rely on our old habits and ways of doing things and we have to be open to exploring new potentials and possibilities.”

The overall consensus is that the form in which the arts will be consumed will look different for the time being, but the administration is working with what they have in order to best prepare their students for careers in the performing arts.