Resilience of performers and the diversity of approaches to professional reorientation in times of crisis

The purpose of the article is to show the relationship, its strength and nature, between the resilience of performers in the performing arts and their intentions to reorient their careers, particularly towards pursuing dual careers. The research presented in the article sought to answer the questions of what is the level of professional resilience of performers in Poland, and whether and how their resilience is determined by characteristics such as gender, total work seniority and artistic seniority, as well as the pursuit of a dual career or a single – exclusively artistic – career. In particular, it sought to determine whether there were relationships between levels of resilience and performers’ assessment of their situation on the labour market during the pandemic, or between levels of resilience and performers’ attitudes towards: the decline of artistic careers, potential opportunities for career reorientation, and dual career reorientation. The research was quantitative in nature and was conducted through an online survey of 111 performers from Poland. The study found, among other things, that performers are characterised by a high level of resilience, with particularly high self-assessment ratings for speed of learning (mean 4.11), sense of ability to work in a team (mean 4.05) as well as ease of adaptation to new working conditions (mean 3.95). It also showed that the level of resilience of performers is not determined by gender, seniority or career strategy. In addition, it was found that those with higher levels of resilience were less likely to report that the pandemic had made them aware of the need to change their career, for example, to pursue a dual career. The research findings presented in this article fill a knowledge gap in the field of performers’ resilience and are the first such study conducted among Polish performers.