5 minute read
ASU GAMMAGE
By Lisa Van Loo
Flexibility is a necessity in show business, at least according to Colleen JenningsRoggensack, ASU vice president of cultural affairs and executive director of ASU Gammage.
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As a presenter, on any given day she could book an artist who may show up late, or not at all, because things happen. So, when COVID-19 hit, it ushered in a new moment of extended fluidity, challenging her and her team to think differently.
“Everything is always about the pivot,” she says. “It’s how we live our lives.”
Since the beginning of this new era of social distancing, ASU Gammage and ASU Kerr Cultural Center have found new ways to deliver a diverse bill of programming using digital platforms that have the ability to reach their well-nurtured audiences and new audience members who haven’t yet made it out to the theaters for live performances.
“We find we are reaching thousands and thousands of people,” Jennings-Roggensack says. “It’s enabled us to get ahold of people we traditionally couldn’t have.”
Digital Connections brings the arts in several ways. Lunch Time Talks is a miniseries through ASU Gammage’s Facebook Live feature, which provides the viewer opportunities to ask questions of theater and art professionals. ASU Gammage also streams free 30-minute master classes that combine music, dance, theater and visual arts with academic subjects taught by artists from The Molly Blank Fund Teaching Artists Program who have been trained in the Kennedy Center arts integration method. ASU Kerr presents BEAMS – a live music series every Thursday night that highlights local artists — and GATHER — live online storytelling events. ASU Gammage is committed to highlighting diverse arts such as comedian, writer, and performance artist Kristina Wong and the Grammy® Award winning East LA Chicana rock group, Quetzal.
ASU Gammage’s adaptation to providing quality entertainment — now digitally — exemplifies its commitment to serving the community. It has hosted thought-provoking talks, inquisitive Q&As and incredible online performances. Gus Farwell, former ASU quarterback and opera singer, presented an incredible performance and insight on his life in Barcelona. ASU Gammage is engaging students and their faculty through many digital programs such as DBR Lab with Dr. Daniel Bernard Roumain and ASU students. ASU Gammage has even had Arizona natives and current Broadway stars Krystina Alabado, Sam Primack and Casey Likes join them to share their wisdom, tips and tricks.
The alternative is going dark, a reality Jennings-Roggensack very much feels with the friendships she’s cultivated with Broadway producers and performers. The Broadway season at ASU Gammage traditionally welcomes about eight national touring shows each season, but the start of the new season has been delayed until 2021, and even then it’s unclear when in-person performances will be possible.
“Broadway is dark. There’s no digital. It’s just dark,” Jennings-Roggensack says, noting ASU Gammage's fortunate position as an arts organization that can still reach its supporters with its programming.
So, she continues to stir her creative juices and exercise the contacts she has in the industry to bring unique shows to ASU Gammage’s new digital audiences. She’s looking at proposals for events that create an intimate, virtual club atmosphere featuring Broadway performers, or overseas productions that offer ASU Gammage a glimpse backstage.
“It sounds interesting,” Jennings-Roggensack says, emphasizing her openness to considering just about anything, if it can work. “Let’s talk shop.”
As much as ASU Gammage and ASU Kerr have stretched during the pandemic, offering digital masterclasses, live storytelling and a live, virtual music series, Jennings-Roggensack says she knows there is still so much more to explore.
“The amount of PTSD both for COVID and dealing with racism is profound. People don’t even know they have it. They’re locked in the house,” she says. “We’re herd animals. We need to be together. Human beings don’t deal with ambiguity well, at all.”
And this is the critical intersection JenningsRoggensack says she believes arts and culture can achieve by using this new virtual space to build and nurture a new kind of village. Because, people need it. They need music and art and theater, but beyond that, the digital space is providing a very necessary connection.
It offers a space for ASU Gammage and ASU Kerr to introduce town halls, to take the temperature of the community on a variety of issues, across audiences, subscribers and donors. And, in some cases, it provides an avenue to reach out to long-time supporters in a new, more intimate way — like, with a surprise birthday party, complete with singing, dozens of attendees and a video montage of the shows the donors attended.
“Donors think of the theater as their village,” Jennings-Roggensack says, recalling two recent parties they arranged for donors who turned 75. “Digitally, it’s going to be interesting to see if we can create a digital village.”
It’s certainly headed in that direction. Beyond hosting birthday parties, ASU Gammage moved ahead with a hybrid version of its annual awards ceremony for the local, high school
musical community. They sourced recorded performances from the performers in the field to produce the awards show, and announced winners live, as family and friends crowded around computer screens and offered their heartfelt reactions.
“People dressed up,” Jennings-Roggensack says. “We presented the awards and, in real time, we watched them all be surprised.”
By utilizing Zoom, Facebook and Instagram, ASU’s websites and hybrid productions of pre-recorded and live performances, ASU Gammage and ASU Kerr are creating a new, and necessary, ecosystem for theater despite the absence of in-person normalcy.
It takes planning, patience, creativity and flexibility, but that’s nothing new for arts organizations. And, even after all of the new programming ASU Gammage and ASU Kerr has tried, there’s still so much that’s still possible. For Jennings-Roggensack, she’ll just look past dates, and hold on to a fluidity that has made room for a new kind of creativity.
“Nothing, absolutely nothing, replaces a room full of people sitting side by side going on a journey together as the curtain lifts,” she says, admitting feeling the goosebumps as she says it. “We know we’ll come back when it’s safe and we can deal with the current circumstances.
We can, and will, be together again.”
For more information, visit asugammage.com.
