Category: COVID-19

Q&A with the artists of MASKED

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An Exhibition by William Doan, Michael Green, and Emily Steinberg

Illustrated headshots of the artists side-by-side with the title MASKED at the top
Artwork above by Emily Steinberg

 

Borland Project Space | 125 Borland Building, Penn State University Park
January 12 – March 2, 2022 | 9 a.m. – 4 p.m. Monday through Friday
Masked Exhibition Artists’ Talk: https://bit.ly/3suSHDK
February 25 from 4 – 5 p.m.

How and when did you conceive of the Masked Exhibition and how did it all come together?

Emily Steinberg: During the Pandemic Year of 2021, Bill, Michael and I were zooming on a regular basis. We did this to stay creatively and socially connected during the time of lockdown and isolation. We spoke about a lot of things during this time, and one of them… was collaborating on an exhibition together around the idea of masking. What is masking? What has our experience been like during the lockdown. What are the issues of identity and presentation around masking. What are the historical and art historical precedents of masking. Picasso’s Demoiselles D’Avignon, 1907, comes to mind.

William Doan: I think it was during a catch-up zoom early in 2021 and we were chatting about possible collaborations. We discovered that we were all interested in masks/masking for a variety of reasons. Emily was already making work about masking, Michael’s take as a physician was interesting and personal, and I have always been fascinated by “masking” writ large as a theatre artist. We started sharing work and Michael investigated the possibility of showing the work at Hershey Medical and we were off and running.

Michael Green: As Emily and Bill said, we had been zooming for a while to stay connected, and during one of our brainstorming sessions, we decided to explore the theme of masking as something that was on everyone’s mind, but that probably meant something different to each person. Since each of us comes from different backgrounds, we thought it would be fruitful to respond to this simple prompt in our own way, and the exhibit evolved from there.

Illustrations of people wearing different types of masks with witty descriptions of appropriate activities when wearing each style
Artwork above by Emily Steinberg

 

What surprised you and/or what did you learn when you were creating the work for this exhibition?

Emily Steinberg: I loved the idea of blowing up drawings and printing them on vinyl.

William Doan: What surprised me was how differently we all thought about masking, yet our mutual interest in graphic medicine, comics, graphic narrative seemed to tie it all together. I learned that I’m really inspired by Emily and Michael’s work and want to keep finding ways to collaborate with them.

Michael Green: I was surprised by how scale changed an image. Most of my original work was done in small and inexpensive composition notebooks, 7.5″x9.75″. Seeing these images enlarged to 4 ft x 5 ft in size changed so much about the images, in terms of impact, meaning, and the feelings they elicited. Also, seeing the various pieces juxtaposed with one another was really interesting, because each of us see differently and express our visions in unique ways.

Illustrations of various kinds of masking on the left with a list of what masks do and don't do on the right
Artwork above by Michael Green

 

How has your perception changed since you first conceived of this exhibition; what does this work mean and represent to you now?

Emily Steinberg: This work represents a specific period in time for me. A time of vast uncertainty, of fear, anxiety, of trying to figure out how to maneuver within new constraints.

William Doan: I’d say my interest and thinking around the complex notion of masking has deepened. Teaching wearing a mask, trying to perform wearing a mask, trying to conceive of mask-wearing and Covid-like pandemics being part of life from now on, weigh heavily on my mind. And those thoughts feed the continued work I’m doing in the mental health space, thoughts about masking anxiety and depression, hiding and protecting the self, and the historical power of masking.

Michael Green: Masks have taken on meaning so much greater than originally intended in the medical context. Medical professionals tended to see them in terms of public health and safety. But for so many people, these are statements about politics, identity, and affiliation. It’s strange and interesting, and also troubling in many ways.

If you were creating work for the exhibition today, what would you do differently?

Emily Steinberg: I would create a full-blown graphic narrative about the experience and present it as life size panels.

William Doan: I would love to scale up the size of the pandemic doctor masks I made and explore different ways of applying text to them.

Michael Green: I think I’d include more self-portraits with masks to see where that takes me.

black plague mask with hands and text drawn on
Artwork above by William Doan

 

What comes to mind around this topic of masking when you think about the future?

Emily Steinberg: I don’t want to think about masks anymore, LOL.

William Doan: I keep thinking about how regular masking in public will exponentially lower the number of people who know what I look like. And how this might feed social media as the location where you try to connect the masked face you encounter out in the world with the whole face of that person …

Michael Green: I look forward to a time when a mask is just a mask and no longer a statement about one’s politics or identity. I don’t know if we’ll ever get there, but I can hope ….

View larger images and the full exhibition at Masked online: https://spark.adobe.com/page/cevVdvRawvSZr/

The COVID-19 Pandemic: Stories from Nurses on the Frontline

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By Kiernan Riley, BSN, RN
PhD Student, University Fellow, Penn State College of Nursing
Graduate Research Assistant, Nurses’ Stories of the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Qualitative Study

Black and white drawing of two hands holding another hand between them with title The Art and Science of Nursing

When I first heard of COVID-19, as a nurse working in the field, I felt like I became the go-to person for information and knowledge among family and friends. However, for the first time, I didn’t know the answers OR where to find them. As days became more and more unclear, instructions began to change, and work places became near frantic. The reality of the virus set in, and nursing (like the rest of the world) was changed forever. I was working as a home health and hospice nurse at the turn of COVID-19 in 2020. Leaving the house suddenly felt like a death threat; yet, we were asked to enter the homes of others and provide care for them. How do you provide quality care when you’re scared for your own health? Drives to work became eerily empty, and every day seemed overcast regardless of weather.

As a hospice nurse, I saw that every death was impacted by COVID-19, whether the virus was present or not. Funerals stopped. Family couldn’t visit. Often times, it felt like nurses were one of the few with the opportunity to bear witness. To complicate the processing of already difficult emotions, there was the immense guilt. I constantly thought,  “I am a nurse, and yet I am not doing enough.” Watching the suffering of hospital nurses in major cities internationally, and working humbly as a rural hospice nurse, I couldn’t see the work I was doing as important. Through all this, phrases such as “unprecedented times” and “healthcare heroes” were being tossed around. Phrases that made me personally feel deep resentment for the people that created them. What did the “hero” sentiment mean for people who were scared to step out of the front door, into patients’ rooms, and do their jobs?  At the time, I certainly didn’t feel like one.

Now, a year later, I feel braver and more resolute in my abilities as a nurse and as a caregiver. I see myself and my fellow nurses, even in my rural area, as heroes. My guilt has faded, and I feel proud I was able to help where I was at the time. As patients, interactions, and jobs slowly return to normal, and vaccinations are readily available in the United States, I have found myself feeling overwhelming pride for the entire nursing profession.

That’s my story as a nurse in the COVID-19 pandemic. But what about other nurses, those working directly in COVID units and truly on the frontlines, that continue to this day? Who are the people behind the term “heroes”, and how have they been dealing with COVID-19 both professionally and personally?

Using stories as a basis for exploration, a team of researchers from both the College of Nursing and the Arts and Design Research Incubator at Penn State hope to dive into the experiences of nurses working the frontlines during the COVID-19 pandemic. Nurses’ Stories of the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Qualitative Study is a pilot study in which frontline nurses will share their stories of working during the pandemic, and the impact this work has had on their professional and personal well-being. Through this work, a team of researchers will 1) explore the experiences of frontline nursing staff during the COVID-19 pandemic and 2) explore the feasibility, acceptability, and perceived efficacy of storytelling with frontline nurses as both a qualitative methodology and therapeutic group process for nursing staff.

Stories can serve as the medium to further connect to frontline workers as well as to gain an understanding of their experiences, encouraging smart and connected health. Findings will provide foundational data for a larger study that will inform 1) the preliminary development of strategies to support the well-being and effectiveness of nurses during emergency/disaster situations, 2) the effectiveness of storytelling as a therapeutic benefit and as a methodology to collect data, and 3) pedagogical approaches to prepare prelicensure nursing students for these situations.

Preliminary stories gathered during the pilot have revealed moments of despair, trauma, hope, and resilience among nurses. These stories have been compelling, thought-provoking, and awe-inspiring. The team looks forward to sharing the stories of nurses with the public.

Black and white illustration of people sitting in chairs in a circleThis research has been graciously funded by the Arts and Design Research Incubator (ADRI) at The Pennsylvania State University and is a collaborative effort between Dr. Michael Evans, Assistant Dean for Nursing Education at the Commonwealth Campuses, and Dr. Bill Doan, Professor and Director of the ADRI, along with funded graduate research assistants, Kiernan Riley and Kalei Kowalchick, BSN-PhD Students, and funded undergraduate research assistant, Logan Desanto, Junior Honor’s Nursing Student at the Scranton Campus.

 

Teaching Tap Through Two Pandemics: How Empathy Illuminated My Path Forward – Contributed by Michele Dunleavy

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By Michele Dunleavy
Professor of Dance, Penn State School of Theatre

Michele Dunleavy dancing on stag, red sleaveless dress, black background
Michele Dunleavy: Performance of 5/4 Ever,
A Tribute to the Life and Music of Dave Brubeck
at the Southern Theatre in MInneapolis, MN.
Photo by Aleutian Calabay

How do we prepare our students to enter into a system that is inherently racist while simultaneously decolonizing our curriculum?

How do we lead with empathy and still maintain rigor in an educational setting disrupted by Covid-19?

These are questions I have considered for months now, in part because of the pandemic and the reigniting of the Black Lives Matter movement, but also because they are valid questions under any circumstances, only now they seem more urgent.

SPRING 2020

Pavilion Theatre's stage at Penn State University Park Campus: Black stage set up with white square tap boards physically distanced in accordance with Covid-19 guidelines
Class preparation in Pavilion Theatre at Penn State,
University Park Campus: Stage set up with tap boards
physically distanced in accordance with Covid-19 guidelines.
Photo by Michele Dunleavy

Like so many of the educators I know, switching to remote learning was neither easy nor satisfactory from a pedagogical standpoint. We ended up doubling or tripling our work load with little to no idea if anything we were doing was even making an impact. I planned, changed plans, created assignments, canceled assignments, then added new assignments, as I tried again and again to polish the turd known as Zoom tap dance.

Most of us are aware that Zoom is not ideal because of latency in both sound and video, and that the technology is only as good as your internet service. As a delivery method for percussive dance, which utilizes both sound and movement, it couldn’t be worse, or so I thought. I’m not going to give you some sugar-coated story about how everything turned out well in the end and we all tap danced happily ever after into zoomtopia, but I will share with you some of what I learned about leading with empathy.

I changed my settings to help with the latency, then changed them back. I bought a webcam and proceeded to leave it in the box for weeks. I made instructional videos in advance of class meetings so that students could follow along if their internet was spotty or if they had to miss class. I watched body parts suspended in an on-screen grid execute tap steps while muted, dancing a full one to two beats behind the music playing in my basement ‘studio’. This is where I would insert the wide-eyed emoji that looks like it hasn’t blinked in a century to emphasize the absurdity of the situation.

While I haven’t asked any students directly what they took away from that experience, I know what they wrote in their assignments, emails, and SRTE’s. They were grateful for the days that I gave them space to talk; to speak their concerns, fears, and frustrations into the confines of that ever-shifting grid. They responded to assignments that demanded they walk away from the computer and listen to the rhythm of their surroundings and then to write and dance what they heard. For their final project we created a video where they got to vent their frustrations at Zoom University through tap dance.

I let go, begrudgingly at first and then later with more grace, to long held ideas about what I believed it meant to be a good teacher, a good student. Words like discipline and rigor that had been more guide than mantra, but ever present in my pedagogy ceased to hold sway over my ‘classroom’. It was liberating in ways I could never have imagined.

SUMMER 2020

Shot from behind: a crowd of people kneeling on the street in a Black Lives Matter protest in State College, Pennsylvania
Black Lives Matter march, downtown State College, PA.
Photo by Michele Dunleavy

Even before the death of George Floyd there were conversations in the dance community about equity, and representation. Conversations that proposed a new paradigm based on models of abundance not scarcity, security not precarity, collaboration not competition. After the death of George Floyd these conversations accelerated, and in the tap community the topic of history and attribution rose to the forefront. Black dancers began a movement to “reclaim the narrative of tap history”, defining tap dance as a Black art form and challenging the prevailing notion of tap dance as a product of “Afro-Irish fusion”. Current tap history texts were defended and contested daily on social media threads that tore at the fabric of my dance community. As I read and listened to the dialogue I began to interrogate my own beliefs, course content, delivery, and sources of knowledge. I began asking Black dancers what current history book they would recommend and their answers were revealing. One suggested I read the Negro Act of 1740; a collection of Colonial laws governing slave behavior, one of which made owning or playing a drum illegal. Another suggested Sammy Davis Jr’s autobiography, while others had no response. That shook me. I had prided myself on teaching the history of tap dance with an emphasis on its African American roots but I was quickly realizing the limitations of current literature and my own experience as a white woman.

Fortunately there have been many opportunities to listen and to learn. Webinars, discussions, and forums led by BIPOC dancers, educators, and theatre makers have populated my inbox and newsfeed. Two Black women who are making an impact in dance and theatre respectively are Karida Griffith, tap dancer and educator based in Portland and Nicole Brewer, freelance director, actor, educator and facilitator, currently on faculty at Yale.

FALL 2020

Michele Dunleavy dancing, crouched, on a tap board on state at the State Theatre in State College, PA
Michele Dunleavy performing in
Steel Valley Rhythms at the State
Theatre in State College, PA.
Photo by TM Grey Photo

By the time I landed in Karida’s online course Roots, Rhythm, Race and Dance I had already determined to step up my tap history game and had begun doing some alternative research based on queries made to BIPOC colleagues and friends. Karida has an extraordinary gift for metaphor. She expertly weaves anecdotal stories with hard facts drawing on current research in the social sciences, history, and her own personal experience. Her weekly ‘lessons’ provided multiple models for including the history of race in any dance class, at any age, skill level, or setting. Weekly Q+A sessions allowed participants from all over the globe to come together for discussion and develop and share lesson plans. While much of the course content wasn’t new it certainly filled in some gaps. More importantly, it helped me to organize my own work in a way that felt manageable. Previously, I had been so overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information, coupled with a false notion that I had to cover everything, that I often felt paralyzed. Completing this course was empowering, and I have enjoyed success applying what I learned in my current classes.

If Karida’s course was all about the nuts and bolts of doing, Nicole’s was the philosophical counterpoint. In her Anti-racist Theatre training, participants were tasked with completing worksheets that demanded more introspection and personal accountability. I was asked to state my own anti-racist theater ethos, describe my practice, identify ways to reduce, prevent, and when it invariably occurs, repair harm. Reflecting back on that workshop I remember Nicole stating that ‘the theater industrial complex is inherently racist’, and I thought yeah, but now what?

Early in the two-day workshop Nicole introduced the concept of ‘access needs’. I had no idea what that term meant, but others in the room were familiar. My working definition goes like this: access needs are what a person needs to participate fully and for learning to occur.

THIS. This speaks directly to my longtime conflict between rigor/empathy but it is also at the heart of an anti-racist practice. To consider access needs forces equity, not equality. Instead of everyone being given the same tools to succeed, each individual is given the specific tools that they need to succeed. To do this requires that we as teachers see all our students as exactly who they are and that we consider their lived experiences. This is where empathy and rigor can combine to provide a rich educational experience for all students. By ensuring that all have what is needed to succeed, standards can be set and met by everyone with expectations matched to the individual.

I still don’t have the answers to my opening questions but the common denominator seems to be to empathy. If I see and celebrate my students as they are, and continue to meet them where they’re at while simultaneously arming them with information about the history of race in dance, perhaps they will emerge from their time with me strong enough to say no to projects and roles that dehumanize and trivialize BIPOC stories. Perhaps they will shift the industry paradigm by telling their own stories. I cannot predict what path the world will take or how my students will shape our future. In the meantime, I hold these words by Maya Angelou close to my heart as I continue to evolve as a human, artist and educator:

“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Teaching Ceramics in the Age of Covid-19: Meeting at the Intersection of Material Studies and Digital Culture – Contributed by Kris Grey

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By Kris Grey
Visiting Artist and Assistant Teaching Professor, Penn State School of Visual Arts

Headshot of Kris Grey
Image credit Argenis Apolinario/The Bronx Museum of the Arts

When the global pandemic hit our University Park community last spring, classes in ceramics and other fields of material studies were tasked with continuing our research and our support for students in the digital environment. This brought into sharp focus our field’s reliance on physical spaces, dedicated equipment, and hands-on instruction. While it was challenging to make the change so late in the semester, it posed a new question for ceramics moving forward: how can we shift our instruction in the face of this pandemic to continue offering creative, engaging, inspiring, and potentially healing experiences through craft-based activities in digital space?

Yihang Hua, Little Creatures, 2020, Claymation video from Summer Art 080 Introduction to Ceramics course at PSU

In addition to my work as the Visiting Artist and Assistant Teaching Professor at Penn State School of Visual Arts, I maintain a professional practice in the expanded fields of ceramics and performance. In the wake of the global pandemic, most of the exhibition, teaching, and performance opportunities I had scheduled through 2021 were canceled. This left me with a deep sense of grief and loss that compounded parallel feelings I experienced about friends and family across the world who were struggling with the health and financial impacts of COVID-19. Thankfully, I was able to secure summer teaching at PSU and I set out on an emotional journey to redesign our curriculum for our Art 080 Introduction to Ceramics for non majors course to be delivered fully remotely.

Yan Yan, Life of Green Onion, 2020, Claymation video from Summer Art 080 Introduction to Ceramics course at PSU

In the introduction to our summer syllabus I wrote,

“COVID-19 has temporarily altered the way we offer instruction in material studies and visual art. This summer, we will cover the same material as any intro to ceramics class but in an altered digital studio environment. This will change your physical experience with some ceramic processes. What remains constant is a focus on looking at art and the world through a ceramics and craft-based ‘lens’. This class is designed to be educational, informative, experimental, and fun! I look forward to our collaboration and I welcome your active feedback throughout the course.”

I opted for a collaborative tone at the outset in order to involve the students in their own learning.

Rachel Kim, Requiem of the Ballerina, 2020, Claymation video from Summer Art 080 Introduction to Ceramics course at PSU

Meeting, as we did, at the intersection of material studies and digital culture, I chose to teach a brand new module in stop motion animation using colored clays, colloquially referred to as “claymation”. To my knowledge, PSU ceramics has never engaged students in claymation projects. I had the full support of acting ceramics area head, Shannon Goff, who received the 2020 President’s Award for Engagement with Students at PSU, and also Tom Lauerman, whose own studio work synthesizes digital fabrication strategies and traditional craft techniques. With their blessing, I then turned to a personal friend with whom I studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art in the early 2000s. Meaghan Ross is a miniature prop and set fabricator based in Los Angeles, CA who has worked in television and film on a range of projects including Robot Chicken, Moral Orel, Flapjack, and Anomalisa. Outside of class time, I interviewed Ross and created video content to deliver to my summer students to inspire and instruct on techniques of model making and animation. To prepare for the instructional delivery, I connected with Liz Miller, Director of Creative Projects at ArtWorks in Cincinnati. ArtWorks is an award-winning Greater Cincinnati nonprofit that transforms people and places through investments in creativity. At Miller’s invitation, I was able to attend a showcase of youth artists’ stop-motion animations aptly titled OUR NEW NORMAL, created in collaboration through a remote summer program.

Justin Rossi, Canappleism, 2020, Claymation video from Summer Art 080 Introduction to Ceramics course at PSU

On our last day together, the class screened the final animation projects and had facilitated critique discussions on each of their entries. The result was an incredibly complex, emotional, delightful, joyful and humbling experience for all of us. A selection of student claymation work is featured throughout this post. I hope you enjoy them as much as we did working together to produce them over the summer of 2020. The students asked me if this was a regular part of the Art 080 Intro class experience and I told them it was entirely new and that their class was the first. They emphatically urged me to continue teaching this particular module and it became a point of pride for all of us; a symbol of how extreme duress can yield innovative solutions that result in growth, positivity, and connectivity!

 

The Sounds of Silence – Contributed by Darrin Thornton

Tara Caimi5 Comments

by Darrin Thornton
Assistant Director, Penn State School of Music
Professor of Music Education

I am a Black man born and raised here in America. Growing up on the edge of the civil rights movement I witnessed the turmoil of growth from a very front row seat if not from within the mix as a guinea pig of psycho-social theory to practice in public policy.

I think of intersections when I consider the two pandemics of Covid-19 and Systemic Racism, particularly in America. The confluence of these two pandemics provides a pointed illustration of what long-standing systemically racist policy can lead to ultimately – disproportionate loss of life and socio-political unrest.

I am moved deeply by sound and spend a great deal of time exploring how musical sound affects our human condition. The craft of ultimately expressing something outside of myself provides deep meaning and fulfillment. Part of that craft requires the ability to listen deeply and critically, and to discern my particular role in the sound creation in any given moment. Listening plays such a large role in that process.

Balance is a concept common to most art forms. There are moments of musical sound that involve the absence of sound. This void without sound is a powerful space between moments of sound. We consider how we entered the silence as musicians. During the “rest” we consider the character and purpose of the sounds we will make when we re-enter the sound tapestry.

This concept of silence is a lens through which I have made sense of this moment in time where these two pandemics have collided – in quarantine, physically-distanced. It is difficult and honestly painful to describe how it feels to witness and be an active participant in these moments.

The Traumatizing Sounds of Silence. With Covid-19, there is a historical understanding that people have been pushing against racist policies that hinder access and equity. This is especially true for health care and the ancillary spaces that enhance the conditions of “bad health”. When risk factors for Covid-19 are viewed demographically, those bodies that resemble my own are most “at-risk”. As if the Covid-19 virus is targeting me and those like me most. The numbers are telling the story in ways that are undeniable.

These racist policies are so embedded within our nation’s fabric that it requires excavation to uncover and unpack them. It may be hard to see for people who are not as directly affected by the oppressive ramifications of these policies and practices. Nonetheless, they are still there. They have been there for a long time. People have used their voices, and their votes, and their actions to express these concerns for years – yet the policies persist.

If you are the targeted demographic, over time the persistence of these policies that oppress you disproportionately erodes your sense of belonging. You begin to feel your voice doesn’t matter. That often leads to silence as you stop using your voice feeling it won’t be heard so what is the point. It feels like you are pushing against a tidal wave of counter story that floods the scene in high gloss white lights. You and your concerns are erased. A colorblind filter is then applied that drowns you out despite the historical and ongoing evidence of your oppression.

Choked out voices via the oppressive strictures “on our neck” do make it hard to breathe let alone speak. Then to have the common trope tossed in your face – why didn’t you say something? Or, be in situations within white spaces where you the oppressed are to “report wrongdoing” in order to start the process of exploring said wrongdoing. That is a lot to ask of someone within the cycle of oppression who finds it hard to breathe. They aren’t even being seen, and certainly aren’t being heard.

These pandemics collide in ways that illustrate this phenomenon nicely. Racist policies affecting black bodies disproportionately at the intersections is an all too familiar theme. This theme runs through most aspects of our society when we are willing to look, listen, and hear.

I am further disheartened when those like me are not-seen, not-heard, silenced, erased and dismissed because the underlying issues are so hard to see and prove; or even harder for some to deal with once they are seen. Why does it take a medical pandemic to show the racial disparity? Especially with many witnessed accounts reported by those experiencing the oppression for hundreds of years in American history.

Those who have the option to not see, not hear, not act are the very ones with the power to enact the changes we all need. However, not until things reach pandemic levels, or until the accounts can be witnessed in living color, do the issues causing the racial pandemics become visible.

Silence during this collision of pandemics actively upholds the racist strictures that pin many bodies down making it hard to breathe. Being erased from a space you call home is dehumanizing. The fact that it continues to happen, and some opt to be mute creates traumatizing sounds of silence.

The Healing Sounds of Silence. The silence resulting from the lack of anti-racist action in both pandemics is felt very strongly. Yet, this moment in time provides a chance to heal as we take it all in.

Anti-racist battle fatigue, the anger and frustrations of discovering Whiteness, the attempts to reach out, the questions regarding what can be done, the outrage for the growing list of names and captured videos, the #hashtag expressions, the media coverage and spin, the newfound spaces allowing expression and asking for perspective – a lot to take in, process and hear.

Meanwhile, black bodies are dying in the same fashion every day. Those bodies not caught on camera, and the body count of those MOST “at-risk” by Covid-19. It is a lot to take in, process and hear.

We have entered into moments of silence as we have been forced into quarantine and social distance. That distance has its effect on us as we consider how interconnected we are as humans – this unnatural distance accentuates that reality.

Like in music, this pause in the ongoing sound provides an opportunity for us to consider how we have entered this silence and how we will emerge from this silence when we begin to engage together more fully again. The degree we are active during this silence gives me hope in ways I have not felt hope in some time. These sounds of silence are a healing balm.

Though I don’t have answers, I do have hope that humankind will find ways to ACT from each of our individual positionalities to make real changes that lead to healthy outcomes for all of us.

How am I coping? When asked that question I point to the goodness and kindness I do feel surrounding this moment in time. I point to those who are becoming more aware, and to those who are struggling yet reaching out to do all they can to be well.

I count my many blessings for the privileges I am afforded and endeavor to do my part to erase racism and to assist those most affected by Covid-19. I pray and am mindful of my surroundings and my particular place within these spaces. I listen, music is a comfort for me always but especially during these times.

The meanings within musical expression have always moved me deepest. I have leaned into musical expressions and shared those when possible. I’ve been reading and revisiting great expressions of Black people both from the past and the present.

I’ve been engaging with those who have questions and concerns and wish to know how they can help. Not engaging with answers as much as holding space to walk with people through these phases of awakening as they walk with me through phases of pain, healing, and further awakening.

Sharing and learning all at once in this process of making sense and meaning from this particular moment in history is healing. I consider how we will emerge from this “grand pause”. I remember the swirling sounds that existed before the pause and imagine the sounds that will return as we re-enter what is to come.

I grew up hearing Lift Every Voice and Sing. It was first written as a poem and later set to music. I encourage you to read the lyrics of the poem/song and consider the relevance and meaning of those words today: NAACP | NAACP History: Lift Every Voice and Sing and offer one of my favorite arrangements for orchestra and choir arranged by Roland Carter.

During this time of Covid-19 and heightened awareness of Systemic Racism, I have reflected on the many position statements and our Nation’s history. I have landed on these three take-away C’s as a hopeful way toward healing:

  • Call – call out racism and break down the policies that bind us to its ugliness,
  • Claim – claim our individual role in the racist structure (own it),
  • Commit – commit to ACTION, doing our part to break the silence with purpose.

It is my hope that enacting these three C’s will provide pathways for ALL of us to erase and silence systemic racism.

The strength of our nation is the degree to which we can Lift Every Voice – and Sing – Together!

Resources that have caused me great comfort and deep reflection during this time:

Music:

Breathe
Inspired by the death of Eric Garner and in solidarity with the Movement for Black Lives, India.Arie presents BREATHE. India sings this song to grieve those we have lost while powerfully affirming life. The song was co-written and co-produced by India.Arie and Aaron Lindsey.

Lift Every Voice and Sing – James Weldon Johnson arr. Orchestral Winds

History and original lyrics: NAACP | NAACP History: Lift Every Voice and Sing

A month ago, we decided to record Lift Every Voice and Sing to inspire young black musicians who don’t often see representation of themselves in orchestral music. Instead, here we are again mourning senseless loss of lives and fighting for justice. This recording is for every protester, every freedom fighter, everyone who needs to be lifted up and to honor George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and the numerous others whose lives have been stolen by police violence.

Seven Last Words of the Unarmed – Joel Thompson
On March 31, 2019, the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra (TSO) partnered with the Morehouse College Glee Club and Florida A&M University Concert Choir for this powerful performance of Joel Thompson’s “Seven Last Words of the Unarmed.” Dr. David Morrow of Morehouse College conducts this piece that laments the untimely deaths of 7 unarmed black men. Following the performance is a panel discussion about the work, led by Leon County (FL) Sheriff Walt McNeil, which includes composer Joel Thompson and two TSO board members—Byron Greene and Patrick Slevin.

Word: Spoken and Written

Always Clean the Light – Dr. Bertice Berry

Analysis: George Floyd, Coronavirus and Inequality Stealing Black Lives
This analysis was originally published by the Center for Public Integrity:

Brene Brown with Austin Channing Brown: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness

Brené with Ibram X. Kendi on How to Be an Antiracist

Sterling K. Brown – Speaks on the Pandemic
“Did this live, and wasn’t gonna post. A friend convinced me otherwise. So here it is. #irunwithmaud …”

What I Want To Tell White Professors When They Ask, “How I’m Doing Today?”

Your Black Colleagues May Look Like They’re Okay — Chances Are They’re Not

This piece has been reprinted with accompanying images on the National Association for Music Education website: https://nafme.org/sounds-silence/

How COVID-19 opened time and space for interdisciplinary collaboration – Contributed by Charlene Gross

Tara Caimi1 Comment

by Charlene Gross
Assistant Professor of Costume Design, Penn State School of Theatre

If this year were like any of my past 20 years, this weekend would mark my third opening night of the summer season. Damn Yankees, which would open this week at the 2020 Ohio Light Opera, is a production that will never be. Theatrical designers, performers, directors, stage managers, technicians work all the time. We work as a team. For most of us, the summer is a busy season when our audiences attend festivals across the country.

Black and white sketch of two men wearing Yankees baseball uniforms
Damn Yankees Costume Sketch for Ohio Light Opera’s cancelled 2020 Season

Perhaps some of you will agree with me regardless your discipline. It is not the social isolation which is so strange; it is the abrupt appearance of weeks without any production demands. And with those lost demands, a gnawing need to work. Stay sharp. Participate in producing something.

What am I to do with all this time? With all my skills? How do I help my community? What do I have to offer?

I’m a costume designer. I design and make real clothing for imaginary people. Before arriving at Penn State, I was known as a go-to person to collaborate on complicated costumes. I have enjoyed building costumes with special effects, and costumes which could survive punishing production demands and dance movements at the extremes of human flexibility, all in the service of a larger team.

Theatre is all about collaboration, but suddenly being forced to pause from constant production, I realized my collaborators reached far beyond the stage. I’ve worked on and designed over 200 shows, but I’ve also collaborated with visual artists on installation pieces. I designed outfits for use in the Joshua Tree National Forest designed to survive rattlesnake bites to shins and arms. I designed light weight clothing with ice packs built in for endurance athletes. I worked with PhD chemists setting up fake crime scenes for CSI students’ final exams (a good workout for special effect makeup skills)! I consulted with a public defender office on clothing choices for clients facing trial, developed comprehensive SfX scars that reproduce the effects on the body of surviving an F3 tornado, and worked with industrial companies on best choices in uniforms for ergonomics and chemical handling safety at EPA Superfund sites. I contemplated how many odd ways I have shared my skills, built over my career in costume design, with the world outside of costume design.

So as Covid-19 hit, and every one of my upcoming theatre, dance and opera shows were cancelled, I looked around to see how my skills could help.

Of course I can sew. That’s easy for me. And cloth masks? Well, there was debate of their usefulness for the first 2+ weeks but I knew something was better than nothing, so I began to sew. Requests first came from friends and family. Then members of my own department at Penn State. Then multiple departments. Eventually from across the entire University.

I like to organize people. We had a lot of scrap material in the PSU costume stock. I organized our graduate costume students and costume staff into mask making teams. We have now produced over 3000 masks and organized distribution to dozens of business units at Penn State, and dozens of community organizations across the state and region.

I did what any good theatre person does—I figured out how to solve a series of problems. I budgeted time and money. I used my limited resources. I phoned friends. I got great advice.

A young boy in a red sweatshirt and a woman with glasses and brown hair in workshop counting cloth protective face masks. Boy is looking ito camera.
My son and I count masks into piles of 10s, and then count by 10s to make bags of 100 masks for distribution. Remote learning at its best!
A young boy in a red sweatshirt and a woman with glasses and brown hair in workshop counting cloth protective face masks.
(They were sterilized before they went out to the campuses by EHS. I swear!)

As I reached out, expanding the network of who we helped, and who helped us, I met the amazing group at the Manufacturing and Sterilization for COVID-19 (or MASC). They were taking on problems as they arose across the state and region. I offered my expertise.

I was asked if it was possible to use construction Tyvek to make respirator hoods. They had one example of a commercial hood. They potentially needed hundreds of them. I told them I had a friend and former student who had built the costumes out of Tyvek at Santa Fe Opera. So, I did what I do with a tricky costume problem; I called a friend (Ashley Bellet) to get her insight on best practices for sewing Tyvek.

Four images: On left is man wearing Tyvek hood with face shield, demonstrating fit by facing camera and in left and right profile view; Right side shows parts of Tyvek hood and face shield on a white table with a ruler
My husband (Stephen Spoonamore) modeling the Tyvek hood for fit. The hood disassembled.

I was asked to figure out how to help a headband to stay on the head properly, and provided headband input for a 3D printed face shield.

I was then tasked to develop a flat pattern, both digital and paper, for a Level III surgical gown for Susan Purdum. I did it with my graduate student, Alyssa Ridder over Zoom, working methodically through the measurements of a gown that took up half of my living room floor.

Charlene Gross sitting on floor smiling into camera holding a legal pad and working with Alyssa Ridder who appears on screen of the laptop on step stool beside her
Alyssa Ridder MFA Candidate ’21 on screen and Charlene on the floor patterning the surgical gown in paper and digitally

Then an email popped up asking if I knew of someone in theatre who works with makeup. I’d be the person. I teach stage makeup for School of Theatre every semester. The question of how to remove makeup from the now highly valued N95 masks they were sterilizing for reuse came up. Well, I can remove makeup from most fabrics, but the N95 mask is a highly oleophilic fiber which binds the oils from the skin and makeup doesn’t release oils. I offered to try if they sent me a few masks, suggested possibly an industrial surfactant would work, but the easiest solution in my mind? Ask the wearers to not wear makeup. Touchy, I know (I work with performers!) but it may be worth asking to see if that helps with some of the issues. Guess what the solution was?

Let me pause here and say, for my first two and half years at PSU, I’ve worked with amazing colleagues. Best in the field of theatre. But to do things which are truly interdisciplinary, while theoretically encouraged, is really hard given the demand on all of our time. Between course loads, production loads, mentoring student designers, designing shows myself, outside creative research, recruiting… there is little time to work on other things. Let alone find others in the University who want to do the same. The first three years have been about navigating Penn State and demands of my day-to-day academic job.

Suddenly, with performance production stopped, and having fortuitously found the MASC team I was working among 300+ engineers, surgeons, epidemiologists, materials scientists, airflow engineers, proto-typers, business procurement experts and 3D printing technicians with amazing skills, many of which were completely outside of my prior experience.

But my skills were completely outside of theirs, and much needed to meet several of their goals.

Now I have become part of this astounding group of problem solvers. I read our daily MASC reports on innovations in testing, containment, process and treatment, and marvel at how many people with novel skills have contributed.

I hope someday soon to once again be designing real clothes to put on imaginary people in the theatre, but in the meantime I am continuing to expand my skills, and, I believe, expand to many other people how valuable the thinking and process of theatrical design can be, when applied to many other demanding tasks. I have met some amazing people during this process, and was deeply honored, even embarrassed, when my colleagues awarded me one of the MASCed Marvel Awards for our COVID response. They cited my unique contributions to developing protective clothing and organizing cloth masks when supplies were extremely difficult to find. I am personally humbled, but extremely proud I was able to represent our Theatre and Performance community to the larger world in this way.

We are Theatre people. This is what we do.

Stay Safe.  Wear a Mask*.  We will get through this.

A selection of protective cloth face masks hanging from a horizontal wooden beam, a saw horse, and a poster board in Charlene's driveway
Mask contactless pick up/ drop off point at my house on a particular busy day.

*If you don’t have one, send me an email and I’ll make sure you have one or 25 within 24 hours.