Beloved CoHo Family,
We hope your practice of social distancing finds you cozy and secure.
Due to COVID-19, CoHo will hold no gatherings for the foreseeable future.
Closing our doors for this amount of time is a terrible financial strain. If you are in a position to help, please consider making a donation via our donation page. Your donation will ensure that we are in a position to support local artists, sharing their projects of passion to our community when COVID-19 passes.
Tough times.
This means postponing BEE, our final show in our current season. Our co-producer Melody Erfani is working diligently with the production team and cast to secure a time over the next year when we can share her beautiful piece with you.
CoHo is temporarily closed. Yet I am furiously busy, isolated and alone working actively in the office while the lobby and the theatre remain dark and quiet. I am in touch with the staff electronically.
Our staff has changed slightly, all planned before COVID-19. Both Emily and Jessica are no longer on staff. I miss them both terribly. Emily is on to Chicago to pursue adventure worthy of her talents and Jessica has moved into a full time position, with benefits, outside the theatre community. She remains active with several theatrical endeavors, including publicity of the brand new The Theatre Co. (for whom CoHo is fiscal sponsor).
Emily and Jessica were an integral part of CoHo’s success and I will continue to miss them both…I know I am repeating myself but in this case the emphasis is necessary…. Without them these last several years CoHo would not have been able to provide the infrastructure to support the local artists, who CoHo is designed to support.
I am personally concerned about these theatre artists. Many of them are freelancers who were surviving and thriving within a gig economy that is now collapsed. Amica Hunter, who performed in Witch Hunt as part of the CoHo Clown CoHort, lost all her gigs through the end of the summer! She is one of many.
CoHo is supporting the efforts of Portland Creative Laureate Subashini Gansesan and Oregon Poet Laureate Kim Stafford with the Portland Area Artist Emergency Relief Fund. If you are an artist click for more information. Additionally, CoHo is providing In-Kind administrative and advocacy support.
If you are in a position to support the independent artists CoHo champions, follow this link to make a donation.
I hope my next note to you all will be about what comes after this viral disaster, and will include an announcement for CoHo’s 25th Anniversary Season.
Stay in touch while apart,
Philip Cuomo
Producing Artistic Director
coho@cohoproductions.org
