Art in the time of corona - guest post

Something a bit different for this week's woo-blog. As a dad-writer type, you may have guessed that some of my progeny would also have that writing gene (apples falling not far from trees and all that.)

So today, here is a a guest post from my daughter and writer/actor/artist Reba Terlson. Among other things Reba and I have collaborated on and produced plays for my city's Fringe Festival.

Like her pop, she's a creative sort - here in this post, she's writing about what it's like to create in the time of the pandemic. I'll turn it over to her:

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Hi everyone, my name is Reba and I’m a multidisciplinary artist in Winnipeg, MB and my pronouns are she/her.

 I’m here to talk about everyone’s favourite subject: Covid-19

The pandemic has affected me as an artist in more ways than I count. At the beginning of 2020 I had artist contract gigs lined up into summer, and by March of 2020 they had all disappeared. 

Perhaps this might have made me frustrated, and initially I was.

However, I begun to realize that maybe taking a break from my artistic hustle was exactly what I needed. Something I would not have realized without Covid-19 basically shutting down my industry. So, it turns out that Covid-19 made me a better artist… who knew?

Here's the opening to the blog post I wrote about this: 

As a self-represented artist, myself, and many of my friends were severely affected by Covid-19. But Covid -19 is why I’m a better artist.

In January of 2020, I finished helping produce a show for a theatre festival here in Winnipeg, Manitoba. I had auditions lined up, and I was being asked to produce and run social media accounts for theatre shows for that upcoming summer.

The week before March 15th, I got sick which was fairly normal. When stay-at-home orders started my boss told me to stay at home, just in case. Well, March 15th hit and about two days later my work closed. I was unemployed and applied for CERB that weekend.

Over the next few weeks, my auditions got postponed indefinitely. The “guaranteed” producer and social media gigs I had were up in the air, and I didn’t know what my summer was going to look like. Perhaps I should have panicked, but that’s not what happened. Because this was early Covid times none of us knew the effect that it would have on the arts or our livelihoods...

To read the rest, jump over to my blog:

https://beyondpandemic.me/the-reason-covid-19-made-me-better-at-art-and-a-more-creative-artist/

Thanks for reading!
Reba.