The Blackout Revue, a virtual Philadelphia fundraiser for The Actors Fund happens this Saturday.
While talk of opening movie palaces, concert venues and live theater stages to 25-33% in a still-stuck-in-pandemic universe is nice, these amounts will hardly pay the rent, let alone duke the players. To that end, on Saturday, March 13 at 7 PM ET virtual time, The Blackout Revue – a Philadelphia fundraising showcase and concert benefiting The Actors Fund happens hard.
This Blackout concert marks one full year of a Covid shutdown and the financial/artistic woes that come from such a layoff by celebrating the Philadelphia performing arts community through what Meredith Beck tells me is “cross-union collaboration to provide a varied evening of musical theater, monologues, concertos, orchestral masterpieces. And guest appearances by the legendary Brian Stokes Mitchell. You’ll hear from our members of Actors Equity, IATSE, AFM & SAG-AFTRA.”
Beck, who represents the Actors Equity Association, will perform a piece from this city’s quintessential musical 1776. “Don’t be late to view the Blackout Revue. I go on first,” said Beck, who mentioned that she will sing “He Plays the Violin,” as Martha Jefferson, the role she played in 1776 five years ago at the Media Theater under the direction of Jennie Eisenhower.
“For this fundraiser, Beck was able to perform with the musician dream-team of Christopher P. Ertelt, Rebecca Ansel, Marjorie Goldberg, Susan Lerner, Lisa Vaupel and Marc Seidenberg. All of whom met in a church, and are playing together masked and 6 feet apart. Beck recorded herself singing and acting the next day and all of its videos were edited together.
“I have personally benefited from The Actors Fund during this pandemic,” said Beck. “They are doing the real work and directly helping artists. So often policies and aid are helping ‘arts companies’ but not reaching any actual artists. Both are important. Artists are, largely, ‘gig workers’ and get left out of any kind of trickle-down effect because we rarely work for one organization.”
This event is free to view, but keep in mind that should you donate. Your contribution will find its way to an artist. And, the Blackout Revue concert will be available to watch until Tuesday, March 16. But due to the Theater Authority Agreement, will then disappear forever.
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