Friday, April 21, 2023
What social distancing? It's a spring awakening for St. Louis entertainment venues.
www.stltoday.com: We’re worlds away from spring 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic shut down life as we know it. Arts and entertainment venues struggled, many opening virtual doors when they were forced to close their actual doors. The virus's omicron variant in 2022 continued to keep many visitors away and disrupt schedules.
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Covid hit the live entertainment industry hard and even three years later, we're still recovering in some ways. However, in many ways, covid was a way for us to use our adaptability skills and change a lot of procedures according to the state of the pandemic. Now in 2023, we've discovered a lot of these changes we've made are helpful in ways other than just social distancing. I remember I was a sophomore in high school when we had to shut everything down out of nowhere. Our season got completely thrown off and we basically had to rethink from the ground up. We tried our hands on a zoom production, which was a very surreal experience. For our next few shows in late 2020 and early 2021, we were able to get together and film shows to then stream to audiences. As terrible as our circumstances were, it gave me a taste of the twist and turns and bumps of the real theatre industry and gave me confidence I could handle having it as my career.
Especially as a dancer, social distancing definitely took its toll on me. being in classes and having to work towards performances that definitely required some sort of physical touch in order to make the piece look cohesive enough to do as an actual group was very challenging and honestly somewhat hindered my growth as a dancer. when I was little dancing was definitely more about perfecting my technique on my own but As I Grew Older learning to dance with others and make my movement look not similar but cohesive with theirs became what was important to me. my junior year of high school we had to come up with ways to make the pieces look cohesive and like they actually were meant to be together. we had to mess around with the six foot rule a little bit but in the end we definitely came up with pieces that looked pretty well together as a group.
“This year it feels like it’s not a concern at all.” How am I supposed to feel about the fact that people are no longer considering the pandemic or Covid as a threat? On one hand, I am eternally grateful that our industry has returned almost full force so that way I can enjoy it the way I did before the pandemic once again. On the other hand, I realize that forgetting the pandemic ever happened and not following any of the safety protocols poses a great issue to civilian health. I also worried that we are forgetting that the pandemic was a global trauma that needs to be addressed. And I do not mean addressed by making art about it, but rather putting in safety protocols that are somewhere between the old normal and the pandemic standards. For example, having hand sanitizer dispensers next to every single interactive museum element. Or, having masks available at every live theater venue, even if they are not required. I also think that every single entertainment facility should make sure their air is well ventilated in a way they never did before and have a more rigorous cleaning procedure.
COVID 19 is probably gonna take up a few chapters in a AP US History Textbook someday. There was so much dysfunction especially in our profession. Shows being paused left and right or then outright closed. Money was tight, and audiences were tighter. How do you do classic theatre without an audience. I saw many creatives making virtual theatre but that was not the same at all. Virtual theatre was quite a hit or miss. The quality of the streaming services was not quite ideal neither the sound quality. It left much to be desired, especially in high school productions. My highschool did a few short plays virtually and they were fine but left much to be desired.
I do think now that the pandemic is more of background noise to us, there is a sense of overcompensation. The want to make up for lost time. Therefore leading to bigger audiences.
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