Patrick Lundeen posted a question on facebook that I happened to see, which made me go off a little bit. Not at him, but at the general trend of theatre in our ‘uncertain quarantine times’ in general.
Patrick wrote:
Are Edmonton people planning on still trying to produce theatre in the fall??
Would you go see theatre in the fall??
Would you rehearse and perform a play in the fall??
Interested to hear my community’s thoughts on all this…
I wound up responding off the cuff with:
I have no plans or am included in any plans to produce in-person theatre in the fall or really anything before 2021. And I wouldn't go see any either. Truthfully, I don't think producers are taking very seriously the actual consequences of worst-case scenarios for their audiences, or for their performers and crew. The burden for years has fallen unnecessarily on talent, stage managers, and crew to absorb the burdens of leadership failings and in the past (and today), those burdens caused injuries, trauma, and abuses of pay and time.
Now that those failings could literally kill multiple people in and around our communities, I see no real reason to trust theatres on that front.
But since that reply, I've added a lot more personal thoughts here.
I don’t think it’s a surprise to anyone that I have a lot of trepidation towards theatre. Even more so now because I’m observing people wanting to get back to the business of ‘making’ theatre, without really talking about what that’s going to TAKE. As Gerry Morita pointed out, this should be an opportunity for the industry to start doing some real work about systemic theatre issues, racism, abuse, discrimination, inequalities.
Now I will say I’ve been almost arm’s length from theatre for a bit now, so maybe these conversations are happening around how to keep both audiences and cast safe (I imagine they can’t NOT be happening). But if they are, then they are certainly still happening behind closed doors, because I am not seeing them, I’m not privy to them, and it certainly looks like all of my peers of both actors and crews are on the outside of these talking points.
My entire career has been as a stage manager (and as a technician), protecting the cast, and the audience is ALWAYS at the forefront of my mind. I’m not sure if all GM’s and AD’s are aware of that...so here’s a bunch of questions for my peers to start thinking about, and to show why I still am not sure producers can be trusted.
Are we going to cap how many performers and crew are in a show? What do we agree is a ‘safe’ number? Even a ‘one person show’ still usually has a crew member (or two), and a stage manager (or two). That’s already a pod of potentially 5, plus a director, and at least one designer. All for the duration of rehearsal at least.
Are theatres going to up their compensation for performers and crew members? Because almost all of us for our entire careers have juggled multiple performances. Rehearse from 10-6, grab dinner, race to the theatre before 7 for call and perform another show. If you’re in two four person casts, with 3 crew each, each member of a show could be networking wider than 40 people with little problem, even before factoring in an audience. As an extension of that, are we also going to be forbidden from doing table reads, one off performances, improv nights, basically any other form of performance or presentation that’s not the show? That means we all just went from upwards to a dozen contracts down to….5? 6? In a year? If they line up perfectly? How are we going to take care of people’s basic income during that time.
Same with crews. Does that mean crewing your show, I can’t take IA calls? Riggit? I could be working on crews of a dozen people (assuming concerts or the like get started again). Am I putting pods of shows at risk by taking other work. (Most certainly). So will theatres be paying people for exclusivity during the time they are engaged? I doubt it.
Are theatres going to hand out similar questionnaires that we see for elective medical procedures for patrons? For their artists? Those that ask them to sign and date that they don’t have COVID and absolve theatres of responsibility?
Are theatres going to mandate that all patrons must wear PPE, or at least non medical masks, gloves, coverings? Are volunteer ushers or FOH people going to be turning away members of the public who don’t comply? (And there are absolutely going to be people who don’t want to wear masks, let’s not lie).
Will Ushers and FoH staff be provided with PPE? With training?
What about our costumers? Or are we returning to theatre without them? What about hair, and makeup? Or are we returning to theatre without them? What about our carpenters, and our designers? Or....are we returning to theatre without them? Without them because producers are interested in keeping pods small and sizes lower? Is it okay for us to leave our peers behind?
Is there suddenly a budget for 2-4x more programs? Because we can’t reuse any of them?
What are we going to do about dressing rooms? Will actors all have individual ones? Actors are almost always in tiny spaces crammed in together for an hour or more before a performance. I’ve seen 6 people occupy literally 90 square feet for a week. What are the solutions for this?
Who is cleaning up the theatre after? In every G house I’ve worked in, that has fallen to me the SM and the Ushers. Picking up empty wine glasses, plastic cups, people’s candy wrappers, tossing programs in a bin.
What about bathrooms? Are there going to be separated bathrooms now for artists/crew and patrons? And for patrons, how are we going to reconcile a number of people rapidly using a bathroom with no time to clean it between intervals? Restaurant and medical bathrooms are cleaned every half hour because there isn’t a massive push, theatres have a 15 minute window where usually 25-40% of our patronage uses a bathroom during an intermission.
What about our disabled patrons? Has anyone put together literally any thought about that? (Separately but linked, Kelsie Acton sent me this, https://disabilityarts.online/magazine/news/new-report-highlights-slump-in-disabled-audiences-confidence-in-returning-to-arts-venues/ which definitely should be read by all theatre practitioners.)
Are theatres set up to provide contact tracing when health officials ask? Will we know where patrons sat, and what people will be potentially affected? Will we even have a record of who came to see a show on a given night?
Is there a budget for hand sanitizer in lobbies? For that matter, is there one for the rehearsal hall? Because for literally my entire 16 year professional career, I have personally always provided hand sanitizer out of my own pocket as a stage manager, and except for the opera, have NEVER BEEN COMPENSATED.
Have we tested the moment when a patron calls a theatre and says “I was at your performance the other night, and since then I’ve tested for COVID.” What policies have you written for that moment? What happens next?
What about the moment, when a patron or the loved one of a patron dies. And says “They caught it at x performance.” Have we thought about that? Have you literally point-blank asked your insurance about that? Has anyone?
What is going to happen, precisely, if on the opening night an actor walks up to their stage manager and says, “I’ve had a cough all day.” Are we cancelling the show? The run? Is everything suspended until we get tested? It might take 24-48 hours to get results. Are those artists now put in the position of picking the show over the possibility of infecting others? Can you tell me straight-faced that the artist will not be to blame at all, and such a statement will never have any repercussions on their career? Have you written a policy about that exact moment?
Have you made it to the end of my list?
Because I wrote this in 15 minutes off the top of my head. And I wrote it because it’s not an exhaustive ‘everything needs to be thought about’. Instead, I wanted to prove a point.
As far as I’ve ever been involved in it, from the huge stages with thousands of patrons, to the tiniest closet rooms for 12 people a night, theatre has been made on a shoestring dime budget by asking people to accept adverse conditions for both working and for patrons. We have NEVER had enough money, we have never had enough time. Well last I checked, there wasn’t more money now, and there probably won’t be more money in the future right away...so we’re asking our own artists, crew, and community to shoulder that burden.
But it is different when we are asking our crews to put their time and energy on the line. When you ask an actor to work hard every night memorizing lines (uncompensated because that’s just what they should do), that’s a choice we’re all making about ourselves.
But COVID is wider than us. It affects the people we live with, the people we see, our friends, our families. And we won’t know in many cases until it’s too late if they get infected. It’s one thing to ask a group of people to follow a director into an exploration on a specific subject for a few weeks or a month. That’s time.
But it’s a completely different thing when people’s lives are on the line. And there seem to be two categories of people every time I read anyone posting on this subject. There’s a group of artists like myself that echo “No, not until we’re all safe will theatre in person become the priority again.” and there’s the other group, that says “The show must go on.”
No. The show does not have to go on. As Jenn Best put it, Fuck the show. Theatre as a collective experience for us as artists gave us bonds of community and friends. This piece of writing is me begging you to not sacrifices your fellow community, artists, and humans, at the alter of your ego to continue producing unsafe theatre. You cannot ask your artists and crew to entertain the very real possibility that they, continuing to work on your shitty rendition of the Bard will get other people potentially very sick, and die.
Theatre threw the burden of production at the feet of artists, actors, technicians, and stage managers all my life since I’ve been a professional. The burden of handbilling or promoting a show, of staying awake another 3 hours so actors had laundered costumes for the next day, of cramming set pieces into someone’s truck to move from the shop to the space. We’ve done it uncompensated. We’ve done it because if not, there is no show. We have been told “If we really love theatre, if we are really devoted to the craft, we just do the work.” I’ve been told more times than I can count that a ‘real’ artist has done, and does do those tasks. Without complaining.
For literal fucking years I believed that. I believed in the idea that people need to ‘pay their dues’ before they can be treated equally. I’ve been told SO MANY times that there isn’t enough money to pay for music licensing and to just keep my head down and my mouth shut. I’ve been told so many times that every stage manager just finds a way to sort out their OT, or there isn’t enough money, or just get it done. It falls on performers. I’ve had lead actresses take home their own costumes so their mothers could repair stitches.
It is going to be just a matter of time before some AD or GM tells an FoH that there just isn't enough budget to provide a fresh bottle of hand sanitizer. Or a mask. It's going to be a matter of time before someone leans on someone else to just sell 4 more tickets, because that's 80 dollars and will help the theatre break even on a show. It's just going to be a matter of time before an ASM is asked to take the show laundry home and wash it all, untrained, unprepared for keeping themselves and their family safe from the virus.
And you know what? If it infects our audiences, if it gets our friends sick? People are going to blame that actor, that usher, that ASM, that technician. Because as we've seen for the last year, theatre management is wholly unprepared for MeToo and accepting the systemic leadership failings that are rife in our industry. Why should we, why should any of us believe they are adept in any way at handling a pandemic?
A lot of us gave our lives for theatre. But it’s not right that you’re now asking for our loved ones and for society at large to die for it.
Theatre will return one day, or it’ll be different now. But don't tell us that we need to make more sacrifices to keep breathing life into it. I refuse to believe the answer is to continue to spend lives. And theatre, which has always done it with duct tape and a prayer, is not the way to fight a pandemic.
Holy Cow. Insane. Thank you so much.
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