Observer: For the one in four Americans who have been told to stay at home during this COVID period, it might be hard to put down the news and pick up the pen. Fortunately, Pulitzer Prize winner Paula Vogel has some encouraging words: “Everyone, and I mean everyone, is a storyteller and a writer.”v
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Making art is a great way to spend quarantine time. When I’m not doing school work (which is most of the time still even though we’re online), I try my best to make art, whatever form I want it to be in. While doing something creative certainly eats up our boredom alone in isolation, it also brings satisfaction and feeds your soul. That’s a really dramatic way of saying it but it’s genuinely how I’ve felt for the past week when I’ve had to change to make art. I think we also don’t necessarily need to make things. Watching movies and shows is kind of “demonetized” as a procrastinating action. But now it would be a good way to feed our creativity and really think and reflect on the things we see. So then we can make more art! Staying in touch with our communities and sharing what we’re doing is another important thing to do now. The drama faculty have been saying this a lot, that self-isolating does mean we're cutting off connections and people. These are all good ways to stay healthy during a crisis like this.
Thinking about theater as just a really great game of poker is some comforting advice. I am one of those people who often slams on the breaks before turning the key (I am SO sorry for the Broadway pun but that idiom really does describe it best), especially in a group setting. Thinking about a brainstorming session as poker seems much more productive because with poker, and this is coming from someone who is royally helpless when it comes to poker, you make the best of what you have, and you put it all out there. Again, I am horrible at poker, so I could be missing the point entirely. Regardless, I feel like I have already been doing this kind of group brainstorming over Zoom with Imaginarium. My group and I have had meetings over Zoom to come up with a storyline and designs, and it has filled my quarantine with empowerment and inspiration.
This article begins with a shocking statistic, that one in four Americans have been told to stay home during this COVID - 19 period, which puts into perspective the severity of this time that we are living in. I have definitely felt during this time that listening to the news, and even going on social media, is incredibly draining. However, I am encouraged and inspired to see that many artists, whether that be my classmates or celebrities I admire, have taken this time to find inspiration and to continue making and sharing thier art. I also think that it is so cool, that artists are doing their part to inspire other artists, as Paula Vogel has done to inspire people to write plays. This not only keeps people busy and engaged but reinforces the fact that within the arts there is an incredible community that supports each other through difficult times.
I have to say I thought I would be taking my time in quarantine to make art and work on some of my side projects but so far, I've been almost as busy now as I was when I was still at school. Being home comes with new challenges and responsibilities that were unexpected. But even so, I hope to be free enough to bein creating again at some point in the near future. I've noticed this surge towards creativity and creation even in my youtube ads. Most of them are for this service called Masterclass which allows interested people to pursue creative writing alongside some of the greats of the writing industry. People like Neil Gaiman and Dan Brown are offering video/instructional guidance to creating and getting over the feeling that good writing is based on pure talent and not hard work. The idea that anyone can become an incredible creator when the time is put in is especially good to hear when you finally have time to possibly pursue creative endeavors.
This is my favorite part of this whole situation. It is a situation that can easily make us all feel very trapped and alone, because we are truly powerless to resist it. It is very easy to lose yourself in the helplessness of it all. But watching other artists taking a stand and finding the community between all of us is so wonderfully inspiring. This entire event and sequence of events is going to change, not only the theatre and arts industries, but way of life very quickly. Hopefully this newly formed, tight knit bond continues to grow once we are able to interact with each other face to face again, and zoom once again becomes a word simply to describe how fast we drove to see a friend, or football game, or to catch a show we were running late for. We all know society is going to change once we are allowed to resume day to day life, but I hope that it will change for the better, and these artistic interactions give me hope.
Creating at home is a great way to keep artistic juices flowing while being stuck in environments that may not always allow that. I wish I had more time to create and do art, because I feel so drained from the social isolation, but I feel like I haven’t had the time because in the same way I am so drained from social isolation, I am similarly drained from always having to be on my computer for class and homework. For theatre artists, I think it can be 10 times harder to create since our work is so reliant on other people, so it is incredible that theatre artists are able to spearhead their own ways of being creative and finding that seed of spirit when a lot of that socialization is taken away. There is such an importance of keeping up spirits in this time, and staying creative is one great way to do it.
It’s always cool to see all of the ways people are coping with this pandemic and making the best of the situation with the skills and time they have. The social isolation for a lot of us in the theatre is pretty jarring since usually we come into contact with a lot of other people day to day from being in the shops, to the office, and just around others that keep us inspired. I’ve been trying to work on more personal projects due to me being stuck at home for the foreseeable future, but I’ve noticed that it’s still difficult to do because of the sheet amount of time that classes are making me spend sitting at my computer screen. I understand that these classes still need to be taught and we need to learn the material, but the fact that we have to mindlessly stare at the computer for hours on end doing all of our classes and all of our assignments is really not sustainable and pretty damaging to our health. I hope the school figures out a way to let us spend less time on the computer and do more self-productive things in this time.
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