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Has Covid Given Our Theater a Gift?
Easing Back into the Breach: A View From New York
by Emily Hawkins
“The Watering Hole” by Lynn Nottage, Signature Theatre, New York (Photo by Lia Chang)
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Starting to see the light of the end of the Covid Tunnel begs the question: Is there a future for these pandemic innovations?
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There’s no doubt that theater is one of the most resilient art forms. It has been considered a “dying” industry for centuries, and many thought this past year might have been the final nail in the coffin. Obviously, the heart of theater – people gathering together for a collective experience — was impossible under the restrictions of Covid-19. We were sequestered into isolated quarantines and not allowed within six feet of one another — let alone inside an intimate theater. However, theater persisted, as it always has. We were forced to adapt and teach ourselves the art of the Zoom. But through it all, we agreed nothing could compare with the feeling of being in a live performance.
Starting to see the light of the end of the Covid Tunnel begs the question: Is there a future for these pandemic innovations?
Had the pandemic happened 10-15 years ago, it very well might have been the end of theater as we know it. With technological advancements of the past decades though, the theater, like so many large and small businesses, has adapted to the challenge of social distancing. Board meetings went on Zoom. Play readings were live-streamed. Within the constraints of the pandemic, accessibility abounded in ways previously deemed impossible. Because people were unable to come to the theaters, theaters had to come to the people. All the virtual productions and readings were made available to anyone with a signal, extending the traditional reach tenfold.
City Garage Theatre in Santa Monica, for example, reports that its online reach has become international, with viewership of some of its archival broadcasts far surpassing audience attendance for a traditional in-person production.
Other repercussions are even more far reaching. This past year’s creations have altered what we think of as “theatrical.” Does an audience have to be in the same space as the actors to have a that collective experience? (That has always been the main divide between the theater and cinema.) The understanding is that if we’re looking at actors on a screen, the experience is fundamentally cinematic. So, what is it that makes theater theatrical? Is it the just unpredictability of watching a live performance? Being in the same room as the actors? Going through the journey of a show with fellow audience members?
Of course, there were live streams of different shows to try to tackle the shared experience. There were also socially distanced productions with audiences masked and six feet apart, but all were still lacking that authentic sense of community that comes with a traditional night at the theater.
The Watering Hole
Photo by Lia Chang
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Acknowledging the growing pains we’ve had to go through to get to this point will kindle the flame of this new era of theater.
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One production that took on the Covid restrictions in a unique, technologically advanced way was Lynn Nottage’s new creation, The Watering Hole, which she developed with Miranda Haymon, and 17 other artists of color. One of the first Covid-era, “in-person” productions arrived at Signature Theater in New York in an unexpected fashion.
Audience members, split into small groups, were “immersed” into a series of installations, exploring “restorative powers of water” and the ensuing healing we all need from the travails of this past year and a half. The various emotionally charged installations, however, evoked a forced catharsis that felt inauthentic. Each installation led groups from the lobby, through the theater- and backstage spaces, invited audience members to contemplate where they feel the safest and whole — or where their “watering hole” may be. The culmination of the experience necessitated a feeling of vulnerability in order to experience the healing. For this viewer, the production’s reach for audience vulnerability felt strained.
Perhaps this is because the primary players in the event were the design elements, which tried to substitute for the presence of actors. Not a single actor was to be found within the walls of the theater, unless one redefines audience members participating in an immersive experience as players in a theatrical event so carefully designed by others. Those designed were certainly innovative, technically: impressive projections of a soliloquy by the “Ocean Goddess” in one installation, and a fully sensory soundbox in another segment, the designers showcased their mastery of advanced technological and artistic methods. Intended as a “welcome back to the theater,” The Watering Hole provided an unexpected experience to audiences longing for any exposure to the theater they could get after the long period away. And yet . . .
As we re-enter the live theater sphere, what is to come of the quarantine creations? With over a year spent on developing new methods to enjoy the theater, do they all disappear without a trace, once we can sit side by side with our fellow theater lovers? Obviously, it will still be some time before things are truly “back to normal” with the unpredictability of the new variants and vaccination guidelines; will there come a time when we will enter a theater again, uninhibited?
The unprecedented accessibility encountered over the pandemic should certainly find its way into the mainstream of the theater community moving forward. Only time will tell how these theaters choose to incorporate these new projects into their rotation or get rid of them altogether. We step into the future of theater with new tools in our toolbox and an increased scope of what can be theatrical. Acknowledging the growing pains we’ve had to go through to get to this point will kindle the flame of this new era of theater.
Ultimately, our return to theatre will endure some growing pains. The Signature Theater’s production of The Watering Hole, while beautifully executed, lacked the final touch of an actor’s innate influence on a live experience. The technical exploration of the piece would be interesting to see integrated into productions of this new era, but the production in the present moment felt void of the healing it intended to produce. The magic of theater comes from the integration of all the technical elements with the craft of the actors in a given space. The last year and a half has left a yearning for the most theatrical of experiences, and anything lacking all crucial elements seems to fall short of that fulfillment of theatricality.
