Like a lot of theatre educators, the Covid-19 Pandemic forced me to be creative in new and imaginative ways. I can say that the pandemic changed me. I’ve grown in ways I never could have anticipated. And now, fifteen-plus months later, as I come up for air during my long -awaited summer break, I am just beginning to process what happened. Writing this is harder than I thought it would be partly because my stomach churns remembering what we had to do just to get through. I don’t really want to relive it. And it isn’t over. Despite appearances the threat of variants and vaccine inequities persist leaving us with a complicated relationship with masks and continued uncertainty about the future. Yet, I feel a need to capture my story while it is still somewhat fresh. The time-warp of the 2020/2021 school year is real. The memory of it against the backdrop of a global pandemic, civil unrest and horrific loss is at once vivid and blurred. I often heard the analogy that we were learning how to build the airplane while flying it. This is an excellent metaphor for what we did in those early days. The urgency, fear, anxiety and uncertainty that gripped the artistic community leveled the playing field. High School directors and professional theatre producers were all asking the same questions. And no one had the answers. This was at once comforting and frightening.
When we “went out” in March of 2020, my students and I were a couple of weeks away from opening our spring musical. The set was in. The costumes were ready. The show was in great shape. After a last-minute flurry of activity and one final rehearsal to prepare for a potential delay in opening due to the rumored stay at home order, on March 14th, 2020 the curtain fell. Like everyone else, I was in utter denial about how long our quarantine would actually be. As the reality set in and our return-to-school date kept being pushed further out, I continued to hold on to the hope that our show would go on if not in April perhaps in May or June or July. I surveyed my cast and crew on their availability. I held brush up rehearsals over the computer and continued giving acting notes.
And then unbelievably, we were told we would not be back until September at the earliest and no one knew exactly what school let alone theatre would look like. I was urged to let the show go. No need to push a boulder up the mountain. I melted down dissolving into uncontrollable sobbing. Eventually my grief transformed into a new level of problem solving. Disbelief, bordering on complete shock and intermittent panic set in as I desperately learned how to use Zoom. I participated in every webinar available on how to produce theatre online. I struggled with the limitations of music and singing over Zoom. Like a warrior going in to battle against an unseen enemy, I plotted, planned and immersed myself in the unfamiliar landscape of a virtual world. With indefatigable energy I soldiered on determined that my students would not lose their spring musical.
We arranged a drive-by costume pick up for the cast. No one was allowed out of their car. Masked and gloved my production team carefully deposited costumes and essential props into their trunks. Our tech rehearsal shifted from a cue to cue in the theatre to designing virtual backgrounds on Zoom. I adopted a new directorial language that included “hide non-speaking participants,” “gallery view,” “mute,” and when all else failed, “just duck out of the frame!” We did it. The show did go on however crudely and imperfect. The bar was not exactly lowered. It was just a different bar. And the fact that we did it despite all of the obstacles brought immense joy and satisfaction. While creativity, teamwork and passion inspired our “show must go on” attitude, I now know that something else less obvious and more profound was happening to me. I was growing and learning. As my thirty-first year of teaching began in August of 2020, I felt like a first-year teacher. None of my experience had prepared me for what lay ahead.
I was learning to let go of the idea that I had control over anything.
Technology became my lifeline and my nemesis. Immersed in the world of online teaching, glued to a computer screen for hours, toggling from one screen to another, I learned to let go of frustration as my clumsy fingers navigated my virtual classroom. I learned to accept lagging WIFI, audio issues, screen sharing, ghosting, and the imperfection of the process. I learned to slow down. I learned to be flexible. I learned to be patient. My vocabulary both expanded and reduced to a few repeated words and phrases: asynchronous, cohort, hybrid, blended plus, social distancing, streaming, resilience, pivot, unmute, please activate your camera and I don’t know!
I learned to use new tools like Flip Grid and Microsoft Teams. Isolated and alone, in an eerily quiet, empty black box classroom, I tried with all my might to penetrate the distance to give my students at home an experience of theatre. Whether at their kitchen tables, in their garages or slumped on their beds, I asked my zombie-eyed, often depressed students, to stand up, move their bodies, warm up, and play games that forced them to connect. Mental health check-ins, sparkle fingers in lieu of applause, collaborating in channels and break out rooms all became the new normal.
I learned how to conduct virtual auditions, virtual rehearsals, virtual Thespian meetings, virtual parent meetings and direct virtual performances. I learned about virtual choirs. I learned how to stage socially distanced productions. I learned that masks work better than face shields outside when the weather is cold because face shields fog up. I learned how to call camera cues for live-streamed performances. I learned what it feels like to finish a show and have a cast bow to no one and to be the only one in the theatre applauding.
Yes, we produced a full season of shows that included a virtual murder mystery, a one act compilation of Shakespearean scenes and monologues in face shields outside under scorching sun in the midst of fires and smoke that caused us to delay the show a week. We performed a small-scale musical with a canned orchestra, singing in masks in freezing weather in a week of rain that caused us to move our opening night inside for a tiny, socially distanced audience. We streamed a radio show and we held a virtual Broadway Cares talent show that was in fact a technical train wreck. I learned humility. I learned perseverance.
I learned that I love theatre even more than I realized. I learned that live theatre cannot be replaced. I learned to never take a live audience for granted ever again. I learned that while I was not prepared for the pandemic, I was prepared to face it.
The gift of age? The gift of perspective? Perhaps.
What I know now that I didn’t know when the pandemic started was that my life journey had prepared me for this moment. I was equipped to help my students get through it. That is an important lesson for us all. We bring our unique life experience with us in every circumstance. The obstacles, challenges, loss, grief, pain and suffering are our teacher. The pandemic robbed the class of 2020 and 2021 of many milestones. But, the gift in the experience is perspective. When they face unknown challenges in the future they, too, will be prepared. Above all, I learned what Theatre on Purpose truly means. And now, so do my students.
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