Canada: “A Catastrophe for the Night Economy”

Since the coronavirus shut down the way we make a living, musicians like me—and service workers of all sorts—are going to need some help.

On Wednesday, it came. Not the coronavirus, which had already arrived, but a different kind of catastrophe. Within 24 hours, my sister, my brother, and many other people I know who work in theater and music had lost their jobs because of COVID-19. My sister Bea, for example, was told that the play she was stage-managing would close a few hours before opening night. My brother Ben, an actor, found out that he had lost his job at the half-hour call before Wednesday’s performance of the play he was acting in.