CoViD, 1 year in: From a Theatrician
Imagine if your entire industry simply ceased to exist. Poof! Gone. You’ve lost — not just your job — but your entire career and so have all your associates.
For every single person working in theatre, that is exactly what happened a year ago. Every director, every actor, choreographer, costume designer, light board operator, box office worker, scenic painter, usher, properties designer, and stagehand has lost — not just their jobs — but their entire industry, their whole career for the last year.
The last theatre gig I worked was March 7 & 8, 2020. We set up the Riverdance touring show, ran two or three performances, and tore it all down again to go back in the truck and on to the next venue. I wonder how many more shows they did.
I don’t remember much specifically from the gig, except there was a lot less handshaking. Nobody wore masks. The CoViD was spreading already, but slowly.There were no cases in Broome County yet. We had no idea it would be our last gig for over a year.
For some of the boys who worked with me in IATSE #54, being a stagehand was their profession. They had no other jobs. Others worked regular 9–5’s and took vacation and sick days to work putting in the touring shows that came through our little city in upstate NY. The cardholders met every month in a room in a private bar called Sons of Italy to take care of the Union business and then maybe have a beer together. I haven’t seen any of my union brothers in a year. We have all been out of a job for a year.
My first gig was postponed on March 16. My spouse and artistic partner, *jk, and I were supposed to go to Princeton NJ to paint a set. There was an outbreak in Princeton from a party, there were no cases in Broome County NY yet. We postponed the trip. That set is unfinished still, one year on.
Instead of going to Princeton, I went down to Tri-Cities Opera in Binghamton and painted a set for a local high school production of Phantom of the Opera. The Business Agent from my IATSE local called me while I was working — we call him Droop — he told me the upcoming shows were cancelled. There was a Russian Ballet, Sesame Street live, and a Buddy Holly musical that were all meant to come through the next weekend; all cancelled.
I kept painting after he called even though the writing was clear on the wall. Continuing to paint was an affirmation of sorts. It was therapy. It was my way of screaming into the storm.
But the storm doesn’t care if you scream. And CoViD didn’t care how good that set looked. The show was postponed. Then it was cancelled. Those pieces are still sitting in my paint dock at Tri-Cities Opera.
Along with a lot of other ideas and dreams.
Tri-Cities Opera is not a big company. It is a post-graduate resident training program, and the resident artists tend to go forth and sing. They are generally successful, even those that decide not to sing professionally. Once upon a time, we built big, elaborate sets that we kept to rent to other companies and TCO put on multi-weekend performances with alternating casts and a Wednesday matinee filled with school groups where we left the curtain opened during the scene changes so the kids could see how the magic happens. Now — or rather, before CoViD — we kept up those old sets and rented them and used them for our big shows at the Forum while we build smaller shows performed in our own intimate and adaptable theatre space.
The CoViD has functionally shut TCO down. At first, our costumer made masks; we contacted the county to let them know our facility was available to help; our music director played outdoor concerts each week. We tried to do our part, and then things evened out and the rest of the world settled into the new normal, without live theatre.
There hasn’t been a show in over a year, except a taped performance of a children’s opera. Everyone has been more or less laid off for most of the year. Plans keep being made for the next season, then dashed as the numbers go up and the idea of gathering for a show continues to be stupid. Now we are ‘planning’ for Fall 2021. Please get vaccinated. It is the only way my industry comes back. It is the only way theatre becomes part of our lives again.
I got into theatre in high school because it accepted me, weird and all. No, more than that: It celebrated my weird, utilized it, made something of collective consciousness from me. As I grew to be grown up, I stayed in it because I love to paint and create and make my own hours. I hate being scheduled. I hate working 9–5.
My pandemic jobs are teaching English online and delivering with Grubhub. I have a college education and I am delivering food because it is a job that needs doing and it’s better for me than working at a store and the pay is better. I get occasional commissions to paint a pet or a small local mural. I don’t work with anyone, I don’t see many people except for a moment at the drive thru or waiting for food in an empty local restaurant.
My friends in theatre around the country are all struggling. Some have worked isolated theatre or television gigs occasionally and the procedures to stay safe from CoViD are fierce. The cast and crew are pods that are essentially quarantined during the production. They have to take CoViD tests weekly at least. Temperatures are taken once or twice a day. Masks are never worn below the nose. Catering is strictly controlled. On breaks, social distancing is enforced. Usually the production is televised and the thrill, terror, and wonder, and completion of a live audience is unknown.
Most of my colleagues are unemployed or working ‘get-by-gigs’ like me. Most of them have left their friends and support system in the cities and are living in family-owned seasonal-retreats or catch-as-catch-can rural rentals through the winter. Most of them are alone.
Theatre was not just our job, it was our home. It was our refuge. It was our place. I’ll be honest with you: Normal people don’t tend to get into theatre. We found the theatre because we are socially awkward and in theatre we are given the lines and the blocking. We found an art form that valued us with a pay check. We found folks that we call friends even though we never see each other unless we are working together - because we aren’t the kind of folks who drop at text to say hi or call just ’cause - but when we are together again, we are friends as though the time between never happened. We found a venue where our odd skill was valued. We found a passion. We found our place.
Our place is gone. Theatre is in a coma. And the orphans of theatre are struggling.
And the world is struggling. We can see it. Tensions are high because we are all isolated to an extent. We need the cathartic release of being in a room full of strangers, all with different core beliefs and different colors and different styles all jammed in against a stage, all screaming and clapping at the first chords of the song we all know and love. We need to be sitting shoulder to shoulder in a theatre with tears in our eyes and unashamed as the tragedy plays out as it has hundreds of times on the stage, as we know what will happen, what is scripted to happen, but still we hope that somehow that it will not, that the narrative will change. We need to be drawn in by the sincere performances, by the perfect lighting, and the music swelling from the pit. We need to go to the packed lobby or beer tent and be so near to so many other people of all different castes and classes and know that we are all together, all made one as ‘audience’.
My soul hurts with missing it. I miss theatre as much as I miss hugs.
And somehow it is just as hard, maybe harder, as there seems to be a pinpoint of light at the end of the tunnel. My nurse friends and some of my teacher friends are vaccinated. My first appointment is March 22. And yet I know many people who are choosing not to, saying they are ‘waiting’, or just not bothering. But we need a critical mass for hugs and for theatre to return.
Please. Please.
Please.
