Awards! Awards! Insurance!

Everyone’s A Winner! The Ivey Awards have come and gone for another year, and my major news is that I am somehow not hung over this morning. The Twin Cities theatre community will spend the rest of today sobering up and trying to remember nominees have been announced. Tickets are on sale now. Congratulations to Children’s Theatre, Mixed Blood Theatre and Theatre Pro Rata! These three Twin Cities companies each received a being found unconstitutional, the “We’ve probably lost” on gay marriage, it seems like it’s suddenly a fine time to be homosexual. But what does this mean for gay theatre? As society increasingly sees gay people as “people” instead of “gay people”, will it need to evolve? Of course, gay theatre has always been evolving to fit the times. However, mainstream acceptance may actually be a challenge for traditionally gay theater companies. For Your Health You may have noticed a preponderance of billboards featuring the famous Paul Bunyan statue accidentally hurting himself in many, many ways. You may even be aware that there is some sort of new health insurance thing coming to Minnesota. Or you may have just heard the word “Obamacare”. Whatever your level of understanding of health insurance, Springboard for the arts wants you to learn more. On October 19, the non-profit will hold an Artists’ Health Fair to help you get more educated on your options for 2014. Job Insecurity In order to afford insurance, you need a job, and full-time work in the arts is darned hard to come by. A select few in the theatre world have access to better paying work through membership in organizations like Actor’s Equity, but even with that, the vast majority spend a good deal of time hunting for the next job in order to survive. This dynamic is not unique to the US. Over in the UK, playwright bemoan the actor’s eternal job hunt and its effect on creativity. In an interesting response to this, Lyn Gardner at the Guardian makes the argument that job insecurity actually leads to more creativity. I don’t know if one them is more right than the other. All I know is that we will continue to work. A lot. A hell of a lot, actually. So, I’ll leave you this week with this thought: A medieval peasant probably had way more vacation time than you do.