A new video featuring well-known Australian artists like Deborah Cheetham, Tim Minchin, and Meow Meow is encouraging Victorians to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
Conceived and delivered by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, the awareness-raising campaign includes artists from Victoria’s diverse arts community and leading arts organisations. According to the orchestra, the content is based on health communication theories and models to address vaccine hesitancy in the community.
COVID-19 restrictions have had a devastating impact on the live music sector in Australia. According to the orchestra’s website: “The Victorian arts and entertainment industry cannot perform for our wonderful audiences if there are continued lockdowns and limitations.” The campaign encourages audiences to “give the performance of their lifetime” and get vaccinated to “...keep our community safe, and to keep our loved arts and entertainment industry alive.
MSO Managing Director Sophie Galaise said:
“Along with our colleagues in the arts community, we are encouraging our audiences and the wider community to get vaccinated so we can all get back to doing what we love — whether that’s playing contact sports, enjoying a meal with our loved ones, or getting back on stage to entertain our treasured audiences.”
The campaign was conceived by an MSO team member during Victoria’s fourth lockdown and Galaise saw the potential, working with colleagues in the Arts community to produce the video. Speaking with the ABC’s Patricia Karvelas on ABC TV, she said: “We are in an industry that could use performance metaphor to impact with humour, to impart a grassroots message.”
Written and directed by Emma Muir-Smith, the “Performance of a Lifetime” video features a line-up of Melbourne-based performers including Cheetham, Minchin, Meow Meow, Rhonda Burchmore OAM, Virginia Gay, Tripod, artists from The Australian Ballet, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Melbourne Theatre Company, Short Black Opera and more.
Soprano and composer Deborah Cheetham said in support of the campaign: “Having now entered Melbourne’s fifth lockdown I drive past dark theatres, neglected shop fronts and elongated COVID testing cues and am reminded once again why we need music. We are not the sum of our physicality. We are the sum of our spirits. The very same spirit that gives to birth to creativity.
"This is our time to prove the resilience of the human spirit and each play our part in reuniting our communities and making safe our future.”
Produced primarily for social media, the video had over 50,000 views on YouTube on the day of release, with an outpouring of positive responses from audiences, who, like the artists in the video, expressed their desire to get back to live performances.