Covid Couldn't Rain On Our Parade!

 My first time back to New York since the fall of 2019 was a thrilling and emotional experience. We had tickets to see the two big revivals, FUNNY GIRL starring Beanie Feldstein and THE MUSIC MAN starring Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster.  We flew out two days after the Tony Awards. Just before leaving, an email  landed in my inbox from Broadway.com announcing that Hugh Jackman was out with Covid.  Fighting down frustration, disappointment and a little irritation that no one appeared to have masked at the Tony's, I decided to hold on to our mezzanine tickets anyway.  Then, in the airport, another alert popped up on our phones.  Beanie Feldstein was out with Covid.  Boom. Covid strikes again. Only a couple of weeks earlier,  a local production of OUR TOWN, to which I had been invited, closed because too many cast members had tested positive. 

Directors at every level from high school to Broadway have faced the same challenges and the same questions - Will the show go on? Can the show go on? The Covid cloud hung over my entire theatre season. Mask mandates.  Quarantines. Testing. My season theme  mocked me.  "A Season of New Beginnings"  seemed like a good idea in the spring of '21 when we mistakenly expected that we would be returning to normal. Nothing has been normal in the theatre except the constant anxiety that has accompanied any and all plans, schedules and performances. 

So when we got the news about Beanie and Hugh, it was an all too familiar feeling. The surprising silver lining, however, was the electric excitement that came with watching the standbys step into these iconic roles - ready, willing and able. As Fanny Brice, Julie Benko was extraordinary.  Life was imitating art as she belted out "I'm the greatest star, I am by far, but no one knows it." They do now! 

As Professor Harold Hill, Max Clayton was charismatic, charming and utterly engaging. He held his own with the superb Sutton Foster.  Thanks to audience cancelations,  our mezzanine tickets got upgraded to house row H center orchestra seats. We  clapped along to Seventy Six Trombones and cheered wildly at the curtain call. 

I felt a kinship with the Broadway theatre community at both of these performances.  I felt a surge of emotion, bordering on catharsis, as I entered the Winter Garden and August Wilson houses after three long years.  I realized how much I had missed Broadway. And perhaps more importantly, how much I love the theatre. Why this came as a surprise, I don't know. But when you come so close to losing what you love, there is a renewed appreciation for its place in your life. 

This has been a long tough road.  Like all theatre directors and educators, I'm desperately weary. But I'm also deeply proud to be a part of a community that has proven itself to be incredibly resilient, determined,  creative and supportive of one another. Bravo to the standbys, swings and understudies who have kept the stage lights on with their talent, professionalism and heart.  I learned an important lesson on this return to New York:  The show must go on! 

When the Curtain Fell: A Theatre Educator's Pandemic Story

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 14^th, 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. 

 

I Ain't Down Yet...But...

I find myself struggling during this open-ended time of waiting during the Pandemic of COVID-19.  I'm a highly organized person. As a director and theatre educator, schedules, deadlines and calendars rule.  I am also a problem solver.  I don't give up easily.  In high school, I was Molly in The Unsinkable Molly Brown.  My mantra is "I ain't down yet." But right now all bets are off. What happens when the show can't go on?

I remember a line from the play, I Never Saw Another Butterfly, the true story that bears witness to the children interned in Terezin during the Holocaust.  Irena, the teacher who inspires and motivates her students to write poetry and draw pictures about their experience, says to young Raja, "waiting days are long days."

These are long days.  I am waiting, like everyone, for this to be over. But that is not likely to happen any time soon.  Given the reality, what does that mean for my students who have rehearsed and were ready to perform their spring musical, Into the Woods in April?  At what point do I holler uncle?
I'm walking a fine line between tenacity and insanity.

We are not returning to school for the rest of the year. I have given up on the notion that we will be able to perform for a live audience. So what choices are left?   I've envisioned everything from the actors coming back when it is safe - maybe late summer  or even over Thanksgiving - performing with clear face shields. The cast members could apply their makeup, do their hair, dress in costume and warm up at home.  But is that even feasible?

There are a million dominoes. The set is installed but nothing has been teched. No light cues have been programmed.  Does this make sense? Or would we be better off figuring out a way to do an audio recording of the cast?  These students deserve some kind of "finished product," don't they?
Or is this just another casualty of COVID-19.  Another loss for the class of 2020?

I don't know. Will the answers come? At some point will the answer be obvious? Will it be dictated to me? Somebody, anybody, tell me what to do!?

Unwinding the show will have its own set of complications - set, props, costume returns. Negotiating contracts. Retrieving musical scripts and scores. What else?  I don't know what I don't know.
But what will the emotional toll be on those kids?

Waiting to mount the show some time in the future without any idea of when that might be seems unreasonable. Reassembling a cast that would then include graduates,  reinstalling the set, re-assembling the costumes.... at what expense? Is that even possible?

I always say, "safety first." This is the ultimate, "heads up!" call.
We cannot do the show until it is safe to do so.  That line is clear.
How long to hold on to a full scale production is not so clear. When do you cut your losses, regroup and create something lasting in a different way?

Waiting days are indeed long days.  I ain't down yet...but it's feeling like the iceberg is on the horizon.
I'm willing to row. But where is the life boat?

Into the Woods and Through the Fear, You Have to Take The Journey

My spring musical, Into the Woods, scheduled to open April 1st is postponed.  This April Fools' is no joke. Sets abandoned, costumes hanging on their racks, wigs sitting idly on their styrofoam heads in front of makeup mirrors all waiting for somebody to call "places."

Technology has allowed me access to my cast. But when you're trying to rehearse Parts 1 - 9 of the prologue of Into the Woods on Zoom from 56 remote locations, let's just say, it doesn't work.
Wifi signals vary. Lags in transmission play havoc with Sondheim's already complex rhythms creating a cacophony more dissonant than the score itself.

Anyone who knows me, knows that Into the Woods is my favorite musical. But as the Meme going around theatre circles says, "When I said I wanted life to be more like a musical, I didn't mean Act II of Into the Woods."  Eerily on point. Equally chilling was my choice of our 19/20 season theme - Courage.  Irony? Premonition? Intuition? Coincidence? Bad luck? You pick.

"No more questions. Please. No more tests....comes the day you say what for... just no more!" 

The drama we are living will no doubt result in great art.  YouTube is already bursting with creativity.  I've always said, theatre people are the most generous of human beings. With no lights and no stage, they are finding ways to reach out to support the community of out of work performers, writers, directors and most notably, young theatre students through multiple social media platforms.

It will be left to this generation of emerging theatre artists to tell the story of "how it all happened."
An unseen, microscopic giant has come into our midst.
Through our social isolation, we are conversely coming together out of responsibility to the community.  "Careful, no one acts alone."  

As a theatre educator, I am reminding myself every day as I strive to keep my cast inspired, hopeful and connected through tablets, iPhones and computers, "Careful the things you say. Children will listen."

It may be "Hard to see the light now. Just don't let it go. Things will come out right now. We can make it so. Someone is on your side. No one is alone."