A Message From Pipeline-Collective’s Producing Artistic Directors

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The global pandemic has impacted all of us, and though the toll can never be measured the performing arts have been, quite simply, decimated. A tragic reality is that until infection rates are lower and vaccination rates are higher, mass gatherings as we knew them prior to 2020 are just not safe.

 

For the performing arts to return, the performing arts must adapt in ways that may once have seemed unimaginable. 

 

However, we believe it is the responsibility of theatremakers to innovate, to serve their communities, and to tell stories that resonate indelibly in the present. This is the reason why we moved our new-works program online, transforming The Salon into a laboratory for virtual theatre (and, hey, if you’re interested in joining the now over-300 collaborators world-wide who regularly play with us four times a month, click here). And this is also the reason why we wanted to make Claudia Barnett’s Outside of Here.

 

Because while Outside of Here is a production whose content is in conversation with the pandemic, it is also intentional about its form and its function. 

 

We knew we wanted to produce a piece of storytelling that could be livestreamed and accessible to everyone from the comfort and safety of their homes, but it was as important that we tell that story in a way that was responsible, ethical, and innovative. We wanted to demonstrate that there was an alternative to the business-as-usual model that starts out like a good time and ends as a super-spreader event.

 

Every collaborator working on Outside of Here has been fully vaccinated prior to joining the project. We are rehearsing virtually and we will only meet in-person for tech (in small, masked groups) and for the performance itself. We’re minimizing the number of people in the NECAT Studio space, running with a bare-bones crew and foregoing a live, in-person audience. At all times in the NECAT Studio, everyone will be masked unless they’re on camera – and we’ve worked with Claudia to ensure that the number of unmasked performers at any given time is no more than two.

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Each collaborator must present a negative Covid test on October 2 in order to perform.

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We've invested in Covid Compliance Officer training and certification through Arts & Sciences Training, LLC, and Sejal Mehta, M.D. provides additional guidance for our safety protocols. We are working in accordance with CDC and SAG-AFTRA best practices, in addition to all mandates announced by the office of Nashville’s Mayor, John Cooper. And as conditions on the ground evolve, our safety plans follow suit.

 

If you have questions about Pipeline-Collective’s efforts to combat the spread of Covid-19, please contact us at info@pipeline-collective.com.

 

And, please: get vaccinated. If you are vaccinated, please continue to wear a mask. We so enjoy the virtual storytelling we’ve been fortunate to foster over the last year and a half, but we miss being in a shared space with our community. And while we enthusiastically applaud theatremakers who are developing other ethical approaches to great, safe theatre -- like our friends at The Barbershop Theater or The Nashville Shakespeare Festival, among others -- there's only one way to get through this moment, and that's together. Let's take care of one another.

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We miss you, we value you, and we hope to see you soon.

 

All our best,

David & Karen

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October, 2021