Commitment

Dear Usdan Community, 

Before the pandemic, we were already living in an age of distraction. Yet, we could still enter a theater, watch the lights go down, and commit ourselves for several hours to one work of art.

Now, arts organizations have thankfully pivoted to creating compelling artistic productions through digital means. Yet, we experience those performances outside the space of the theater and inside a space of distraction.

Let me tell you about my week. I was grateful to watch City Center’s annual festival Fall for Dance and to listen to The Public Theater’s new audio play Shipwreck. Yet, I have to confess that I experienced these productions in fits and starts. While watching a premiere by one of my favorite choreographers Kyle Abraham, I was called to the dinner table. Though Shipwreck is two and a half hours, I listened on three separate days, and each time, had to rewind about 15 minutes to get back into the flow. 

You’ve likely read articles encouraging you to set up a proper work space at home; should we set up a proper teeny theater isolation chamber in our homes as well?

With full program details for Usdan’s Summer 2021 season soon being released on December 1, I can share now that we remain deeply focused on the joys of an uninterrupted two-hour (or more) major. More than at any other time in Usdan’s 53-year history, an immersive creative experience and total commitment to artmaking will be positive and genuinely satisfying. I hope next summer, your own children, or other children you love, will rediscover this form of true happiness. 

Lauren Brandt Schloss, Executive Director