Like the plague, theatre is a crisis resolved either by death or cure.The plague is a superior disease because it is an absolute crisis after which there is nothing left except death or drastic purification. In the same way, theatre is a disease because it is a final balance that cannot be obtained without destruction. It urges the mind on to delirium which intensifies its energy. And finally from a human viewpoint we can see that the effect of the theatre is as beneficial as the plague, impelling us to see ourselves as we are, making the masks fall and divulging our
antonin artaud, theatre and its double
world’s lies, aimlessness, meanness and even two-facedness. It shakes off stifling material dullness which even overcomes the senses’ clearest testimony, and collectively reveals their dark powers and hidden strength to men, urging them to take a nobler, more heroic stand in the face of destiny than they would have assumed without it.
As the first signs of COVID-19 appeared across the world, and as the lack of world leadership in preventing its spread became more apparent, the live events industry anticipated tremendous loss. The first detrimental sign in America came in March, when Broadway announced that it would go dark until the end of the summer. As the pandemic stretched on in America, those closings extended well into the new year, and most of the theatre industry followed suit, cancelling all in-person performances until the summer of 2021. Now, with most of the entertainment industry being unemployed for almost a year, many are looking forward to “post-pandemic” theatre and getting “back to normal” once we can safely produce live events.
What exactly will we be leaving behind in the pandemic-era live events culture? As soon as restrictions were put on large indoor gatherings, hoards of individuals and companies turned their attention to safer ways to produce theatre, namely virtual productions. These pandemic performances have taken different forms across the country: some companies produced live theatre with socially distant blocking and sometimes mask wearing, which were then either performed outdoors or live-streamed to audiences. Other companies chose to produce theatre exclusively through video technology, including the ever-popular Zoom video conferencing software.
Creating content that could be safely consumed at home became central to the theatre industry’s survival: we needed to keep producing art, but we also needed to keep people at home in the hopes that we would curb the pandemic as quickly as possible. In an effort to encourage people to stay home, many arts and entertainment companies, including organizations like The Globe and the The Royal Opera House started releasing video performances at no charge. Disney+ even released the video recording of Hamilton, which sparked a nationwide conversation on race representation and historical storytelling on the stage. Even now in 2021, you can find a company that is live streaming or releasing archival recordings of their productions either for a small donation, or sometimes completely free (check out TimeOut and Playbill’s lists).
with the future of live theatre looking better in America, how are we moving forward?
Many companies and festivals are staying online out of caution, but some remain optimistic about our abilities to perform live theatre within the year. Still, there’s plenty of uncertainty about how to re-open after a year without live events and in the wake of a deadly pandemic (which we will still need to monitor).
Artists’ unions are trying to work out how to pay performers, designers, and stagehands once theatres open: the industry has taken a huge financial hit and many artists may have to take a lower salary, possibly indefinitely. Along the same lines, the Screen Actor’s Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and the Actors’ Equity Association (both labor unions for entertainment workers) have made an agreement that virtual theatre productions will be under the jurisdiction of AEA until the end of 2021, expecting that virtual theatre will still be a necessity for the industry at least until the end of the year.
No doubt, the live performance industry in America has been turned on its head, and even the prospects of opening back up leave a lot of questions for those working in the industry. These questions around rebuilding after a worldwide disaster are delightfully appropriate for an industry and art form who’s survival in the contemporary world is always up for debate. Even more beguiling than the financial question of how to return to live theatre, though, is whether or not American theatre will ever truly be able to go back to its pre-pandemic conditions. Can we as an industry afford to revert back to the inaccessibility (physically, financially, and culturally) that defined American theatre when we’ve experienced a year of widespread access to arts and culture via virtual performances, seminars, and exhibitions?
“The theater is the only institution in the world which has been dying for four thousand years and has never succumbed. It requires tough and devoted people to keep it alive.”
John Steinbeck, Once There Was a War
We love to romanticize Steinbeck’s idea that theatre is a “dying” art, but perhaps it is dying because we have made it an art that only the able and elite can access. In America, theatre is first and foremost expensive. Anyone who dreams of seeing a show on Broadway knows balcony tickets are often the equivalent of a month’s utility bills or groceries. Even smaller regional theatres start their ticket pricing at $25 or $30 and offer few discount opportunities for lower income groups. Even if you could afford these prices, finding a theatre company that regularly produces shows may be your next challenge.
While metropolitan areas usually have an array of theatre-producing companies, rural land comprises most of American geography, and professional theatre companies in those areas are scarce. Here is a map showing the current locations of LORT theatres in America. While LORT theatres are not the only professional theatres in America, this map helps illustrate where theatres are generally located and demonstrates the disparity in access to live theater across the country. Someone who lives in Montana, for instance, may spend more time, energy, and money going to see a professional theatre performance, than someone who lives in New York, where professional theatres are more readily available.
Even more importantly, America as a whole is decades behind in terms of offering equal services to individuals with disabilities. Often, this is because many institutions still treat accessibility as a low priority. Physical accessibility in theatre can be tackled in several ways: we need to make our buildings accessible for those who use mobility assistance, and we need to make our performances easily understood and enjoyed for those with sight and or hearing impairments. Much of the theatre we make is not produced with disabled people in mind, making it harder for those people to participate both as an audience member and as a theatre maker. To take this point even further, there are people who may not even be able to leave their home to get to a theatre, and therefore, cannot experience live performance at all.
With all of the above factors taken into consideration, we see that American theatre is really something only offered to the able-bodied and rich. And due to the intersections of poverty with systemic racism, this group is also predominately white. The pre-pandemic live theatre industry continuously excluded those belonging to minority groups and those with disabilities, both on stage and in the audience. However, much of this changed once the pandemic hit and theatres had to come up with new ways to stay in business.
During the pandemic, theatre became more accessible to everyone via virtual performances. Many live theatre events became donation-based or even free, so more people from low-income households could afford to experience theatre, and not just Zoom performances. The Royal Opera House, the Globe, and even Broadway all streamed archival recordings of their past performances, so anyone with internet access could become an audience member. Performances that some would consider significant pieces of culture were now accessible to exponentially more people, not just those who could afford the ticket prices.
The release of Hamilton on Disney+ has shown what happens when we bring theatre to the masses. People all across the country from diverse backgrounds were engaging in debate (see “further reading“) about this piece of theatre that is considered to be an important part of contemporary American culture. Many of the sentiments revolved around why Americans celebrate another revisionist narrative of history which centers the founding of America around white slave owners, yet leaves out the subject of slavery almost entirely.
Just days after its release on Disney+, Twitter was filled with conversations regarding this particular piece of entertainment, and those conversations soon moved to longer, more detailed discussions on news platforms and public forums. Inspiring debates around what our society values and what we can change together is what theatre is supposed to do! But that can’t happen if we do not make it accessible to as many people as possible. If we want to save our “dying art” we should be looking at how we can make theatre a valuable part of American life, and we do that by not reserving it as a luxury only available for a few in our society.
The theatre community often regards itself as an essential component of humanity due to its pedagogical traits, both for the audience as well as the performers. We often call theatre a “vehicle for change” or a “mirror for society” because stories told on stage often teach valuable lessons regarding world culture and the human condition: so why are those lessons only being told to rich white people?
Much of America’s problem has to do with lack of funding in the arts. We are the one of the only “developed” nations that do not have representation in our government for the Arts & Culture sector of our economy. As a result, our work is often overlooked and under-subsidized by the government, even though we add a value of $877 billion to America’s economy. The last year has certainly shown how crucial it is to have government representation and advocacy, which is why Be an Arts Hero has several campaigns running to get financial relief to arts workers as well as push for cabinet-level representation in our government.
Even so, the pandemic has shown the theatre industry that we can afford to make theatre accessible to everyone, we often just choose not to. The past year has shown us the possibilities of bringing theatre to more people in more places. In fact, if anything, the shutdown of live performances has shown that we need to make our art more available to everyone, because it was the individuals watching from home that saved us from disappearing altogether. Our art will not survive if we continue to exclude audience members on the basis of economic and physical ability. Instead of lingering in nostalgia for pre-pandemic theatre, we should be planning for ways we can bring the pandemic-theatre culture of widespread access into the future of the live events industry. We no longer have an excuse for creating theatre that is exclusive to a privileged few in our society. The future of our industry depends on making theatre that is inclusive and accessible to anyone who may want to participate.
And the question we must now ask ourselves is to know whether in this world that is slipping away, committing suicide without realizing it, a nucleus of men can be found to impress this higher idea of theatre on the world, to bring to all of us a natural, occult equivalent of the dogma we no longer believe.
ANTONIN ARTAUD, THEATRE AND ITS DOUBLE
for further reading…
…on the “Hamilton” debate
NOTE: the ideas in these articles do not necessarily reflect my own sentiments, but I think they summarize both arguments fairly well and provide sources for the original arguments.
- #AbajoHamilton: Disney Stop Celebrating—& Profiting From—Slave Merchant Alexander Hamilton https://somos.presente.org/petitions/abajohamilton-disney-stop-celebrating-profiting-from-slave-merchant-alexander-hamilton
- The problem with the ‘Hamilton’ movie https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/05/opinions/hamilton-movie-mixed-messages-black-lives-matter-morales/index.html
- Why Hamilton is as frustrating as it is brilliant — and impossible to pin down https://www.vox.com/culture/21305967/hamilton-debate-controversy-historical-accuracy-explained
…on accessibility in theatre
- The Ableist Effects of Creating “Post-Pandemic Theatre” During a Pandemic https://howlround.com/ableist-effects-creating-post-pandemic-theatre-during-pandemic
- Rural Theater in a Democracy https://howlround.com/rural-theater-democracy