When the pandemic hit, Las Vegas’ theaters, stages and trade shows were forced to shut down. But unlike, say, restaurants, they weren’t immediately allowed to reopen, nor were they initially included in relief programs. Closures led to an exodus of newly unemployed creatives. “For a while it was every day—there were a couple people on social media just saying goodbye,” says Kate St-Pierre.

That cultural catastrophe led to the creation of the Producers Alliance of Southern Nevada (PALS). St-Pierre, artistic director for the Lab LV, is its president.

Sarah O’Connell, PALS’ director, producer and VP of communications, says that the theater/production community had spent years “hemming and hawing” over the desire to make an alliance. “Finally, this created the conditions where we took action,” continues O’Connell, who’s also the executive director at Henderson Symphony Orchestra and the founding director of Eat More Art Vegas.

For now, the question animating PALS is this: “How do we survive the next six months?” The stated answer on palsnv.org: “Create our recovery together.” And what might seem like a facile solution is backed by tangible plans.

PALS is an official 501c3 nonprofit organization with more than 40 member arts groups, including film festivals, theater companies, opera companies, symphonies, booking agencies, stage lighting groups and more. It’s open to all local performing arts organizations, production companies, event venues and, O’Connell says, “anyone who’s part of the live-event experience, production ecosystem.”

“We lose out on opportunities when we separate the Smith Center from the Strip from the Playhouse or Majestic Rep[ertory],” O’Connell says. “As cultural communities, we understand we’re all colleagues. We can strategize and leverage each other’s strengths for better overall benefit.”

The group has four stated goals: fomenting leveraged resources, like cross-promotions and technical trainings; creating public policy, such as working toward recovery grants and promoting local arts to tourists; forming private partnerships, which would promote economic diversity; and seeking out community collaborations, like with arts groups in Northern Nevada.

“From our perspective, the arts are not a cause; they are an industry. And we need to be treated as such,” O’Connell says. In 2017, arts and culture created nearly 41,000 jobs in Nevada, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Since forming in July, PALS has been influential in getting the Office of Economic Diversity to include art in the Pandemic Emergency Technical Support (PETS) grant program. PALS members received more than $300,000 in PETS grants, St-Pierre says. PALS is also helping members navigate the newly released eligibility requirements for the Save Our Stages act. 

One of the additional tenets of PALS is equality, especially considering the arts are a tool for upward mobility. “We didn’t see anyone creating avenues for a lot of the historically excluded groups,” O’Connell says. “We really worry about resources not getting where they are needed most if we aren’t forging more bridges between underserved communities and these larger infrastructures.”

When governments divvy up resources, PALS wants to prevent the arts from being seen as disposable. Rather than cutting the arts, O’Connell says, “What we should be asking is, ‘How are we going to use everything at our disposal—especially our creative workforce—to save our economy and position it to actually come out of this better than we came into it?’”