Datebook: When I interviewed theater artists and producers in late February and early March of last year, I often felt as if I was asking someone to peer off a cliff into an abyss and tell me what they saw.
A year later, I wondered if the scene still looked like an abyss, so I asked five of my early pandemic interviewees to revisit those conversations with me, that we might measure the distance between then, now and what’s to come.
2 comments:
I find it very interesting to reflect back on the past year, to see how the world has changed, and how I have changed as a person. Revisiting these interviews with various theatre artists and workers was a very interesting concept, and I felt like a lot of the sentiments were reflections of how I feel myself. I remember first learning about Covid, in early January of 2020, and I honestly brushed it off, for at that point, there were only a thousand or so cases. Then, the university began sending out notices for those who traveled from eastern Asia back to Pittsburgh. Then I started hearing about Covid in the news. Then it came to the US. I remember being so optimistic about it – oh, there’s only six cases in the country! We will be fine. Thirty million cases, it is hard to believe just how wrong we all were and how we underestimated the power of this ravaging pandemic. Several of the artists in the article, like me, maintained an optimism about the whole situation, refreshing their lines every week, being more stressed about not being able to produce theatre for a couple of weeks… but as those weeks passed, and the gravity of the situation truly became apparent, the optimism began to dwindle. Then the days, weeks, months began blending together. It finally seems like a light is approaching, and we are coming to the end of this long, twisting tunnel.
It seems like there are two common themes with what each person is doing now. They are either doing some sort of filmed or streamed production or they seem to just be waiting it out. Although I do understand both sides, I don’t quite understand why you would just wait around for theatres to be able to open. Although the art we can make right now is limited, there are still so many vast opportunities for theatres to attempt. Now is the time to be experimental with theatre and try new and interesting ways of doing online theatre. We all know that in some ways online theatre is here to stay and I believe that it is a mistake to pretend like we can just wait this out. Everyone that is involved in theatre should be looking towards how we can better accommodate online theatre and create quality productions. Thank you.
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