Today, a community theatre production I was part of ended. It was a musical with a small cast, and seating for the audience was distanced, which I felt pretty good about in light of the pandemic starting to surge again in my area (almost entirely among the unvaccinated, as I understand it). I’ve been in quite a few theatre productions, and it was definitely a different experience to never have the audience more than half full, but it made me feel okay about people coming to see a show since there are vaccines available now, and audience members weren’t made to sit right night to strangers. It was an incredible feeling to be able to sing on stage again, and to make music with other people. I’ve been missing those two things more than I even realized since the pandemic started, and it was so fulfilling, I can’t even express it. But this post is about more than COVID’s effect on theatre life. It’s also about COVID’s effect on life in general.
One thing every performer knows is the feeling of “waiting in the wings”. Performers don’t usually just go from the dressing room or green room directly onto the stage. There’s almost always at least a short wait just off stage–in the wings. In this particular musical, I was in the first scene, but not right away. So when “places” were called, I would go to the area I would be entering from and just wait. The picture at the top of this post was my view from that area for this show. It’s kind of a stressful time–waiting in the wings. You’ve just spent an hour or so getting into costume and makeup, warming up, setting/checking your props, and doing mic checks, and you’ve been psyching yourself up to have the energy and focus needed to go on stage and perform to the best of your abilities. But then you have to try to keep that energy and focus up until you get to go on. In this show, I had to wait through the last few minutes of the audience getting seated, the curtain speech, a brief part of the first scene, and a few lines of a song before I got to enter. And sometimes things take longer than you expect them to–maybe a lot of audience members arrived a little late, so the stage manager waits a little to call the first cue so they can all find their seats. Or maybe the actors aren’t all set yet, so everyone has to hold until they’re ready.
I feel like that’s kind of where we are in the pandemic right now–where we’ve been for a while, actually. So many of us are ready for the show to go on–we’ve gotten our vaccines, and we’ve taken steps to keep ourselves and others safe, and we feel like life has to go back to some semblance of normal sometime soon, but then for some reason or another (rising positivity rates, changing recommendations from the CDC, etc.), the stage manager just isn’t ready to call the first cue quite yet. We need everyone to do their part and be ready first. Please encourage those around you to get vaccinated if they’re eligible and they haven’t already. And do your best to stay hyped to go on and dazzle the crowd as soon as we’re all ready. Waiting in the wings can be hard, but the show will go on, and it’s going to be great!
growingmoxie.com 