Lack of support accusations
Those whose shows were not cancelled have been forced to find other ways to produce them.
For Katarzyna Raduszynska, a theatre director, staging Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac in her hometown Walbrzych in south-western Poland was meant to be a deeply personal journey after years spent in Warsaw and abroad. The idea was not so extravagant: to stage a play for 12 actors with an original score and choreography. But after the coronavirus outbreak she was offered instead a monodrama with no score or choreography.
Still, she said she does not bear any grudge. “In many ways, this monodrama saved both the whole project and my collaborators, who were able to keep their jobs,” Raduszynska admitted. “I’d have dealt with this odd situation one way or another, yet many artists I know are in a much worse position.”
Raduszynska is one of thousands of artists, many with unstable incomes and fragile safety nets, who have received emergency money from the Polish government. She applied for a one-off handout of 1,800 zloty net (400 euros) from the Culture Ministry and 2,400 zloty net (540 euros) from the state-run Polish Film Institute. She also won a “Culture in the Web” grant distributed among individual artists and institutions, including local governmental cultural institutions, NGOs and churches, worth some 7,500 zloty net (1,700 euros).
“These are only some of many forms of support for artists and cultural institutions,” the Culture Ministry told BIRN in emailed comments. Others include increasing funds for special programmes and scholarships awarded by the culture minister, among other things. The self-employed and those in non-standard forms of employment can also apply for certain benefits under economic aid packages passed by parliament.
This autumn, a new aid scheme will also be introduced, the ministry said, worth some 425 million zloty (95 million euros). So far, the ministry claims, it has invested nearly 94.5 million zloty (21 million euros) in the arts since the crisis emerged in mid-March.
Some commentators have criticised the Culture Ministry for waiting too long to come up with a proper response to the crisis and the hitherto package is rather symbolic, particularly compared with the money transferred earlier this year to loyal media outlets (450 million euros) or the millions of euros spent on a planned presidential election to be organized exclusively by mail, which the ruling right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party was pushing for in May, but which ultimately did not take place.
According to Jerzy Hausner, an economist and co-author of the Alert Kultura bulletin, the Culture Ministry has, in fact, abandoned its responsibilities. The ministry’s package was “a short-term solution which didn’t correspond to all the seriousness of the situation,” he said.
Under the PiS government, Hausner added, “culture is the first to be closed and the last to open.”
"Scene" - Google News
September 07, 2020 at 07:17PM
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Poland's Theatre Scene: A Tragedy in the Making | Reporting Democracy - Balkan Insight
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