Our 2020 Season: The Best Laid Plans…

Last year we looked back on a wonderful 2019 season in a season recap, Sandisfield Arts Center 2019 in Review: Charlie, Community, Culture, and Celebrations, posted on this site.

This year, the retrospective is now (September), and “retrospective” isn’t exactly the right word. Instead, this is a description of a season that might have been — Some of which will, when we are able to re-open, be part of our next season. What we planned was previewed in Celebrating Our 25th: Our Local Heritage Meets Our Global Future.

But, over the months since March, you may have seen planned Arts Center events get taken off the website – an Earth Day family celebration, with games, activities, and talks, on April 25, intended to kick off our “going green” zero waste initiative; a summer of monthly free family films; a Lego competition for kids; the Family Cabaret (“Clouseau Celebrates 25 Years”), art shows with opening receptions – on and on. First we canceled the events through to September, and when the Board met on August 30, we made it official to cancel the rest of the season. Too risky in our space (no social distancing possible on the stairs, etc.) and with what we’ve learned about indoor spaces and airborne virus.

If you’re on our mailing list, you probably received the brochure our team created for the planned celebration year, “25 in 2020”, so you already know what a special season it would have been. But to memorialize it here, we’re recapping what was planned. Many of the performers and artists have said they’d be happy, schedules permitting, to come next year – whenever next year may be.

As you may also know, a few of our events were happily convertible into free, live Zoom sessions – 3 photography workshops with Thad Kubis, and Michelle Arnot (the Crossword Maven) fun and fascinating session on crosswords. Recordings have been posted here, and we also have posts with Ben Luxon reading poetry, a trailer from the film Jerry Herman produced about the Sandisfield Players “Our Town” performance at the Minack Theatre, an interview with pianist Jeewon Park, and gallery slide shows.

We are hoping for a bright “25+1 in 2021”, whenever it can safely begin.

The 2020 Calendar

For a quick skim, here’s the list of events we planned. Thank you to the volunteers and committee members who put this schedule together!