- Since rehearsals began, you've had a midterm exam, paper, or project due.
- You still have a midterm exam, paper, or project due.
- This is the first time in your life you haven't had a spring break.
- You have a job on top of school.
- You have more than one job on top of school.
- You have been personally affected by Covid.
- Your first or second vaccination shot has made you feel ill.
This was the exercise I asked of my cast and crew a week ago. I'm currently directing Antigone at Marquette University, which has a small but mighty drama program. Due to the Covid shut-down, MU collapsed the schedule and instead of a spring break, the students get sporadic “mental health days" where no classes or rehearsals are scheduled. We have two of those over our two months of rehearsals. Currently, they're just making it out of their midterm exams - a lot of them are double-majoring - instead of a normally-scheduled week of visiting friends and family. Due to budget losses, they've also cut a beloved professor from the theater staff.
I don't think I have to tell you how many of them volunteered tentative hands in the air in response to my polling statements. (Usually all of them. More than half of them for each one.)
The difference between seeing them three days in a row vs. seeing them after a night off is incredible. They want to be at rehearsals, they want to work on the show, but the mountains they have to climb to get there make them very, very tired. Happy to be around, willing to participate, but they drag themselves to the stage. It is different than my usual environment alongside students who may be battling trauma due to poverty and food insecurity, but the emotional stress of the pandemic has created similar symptoms and behaviors. They feel insecure in groups of people, especially when the group is moving in unpredictable ways - they can't focus on anything but making sure they don't close distance. They startle easily. Any moment they have to themselves makes them curl up and shut down. This is not normal. This is not normal behavior out of them because this is not a normal time to be doing a play.
They auditioned for this Greek tragedy using classical monologues delivered into a camera with depth of feeling, and they got me as a director, so our first week of rehearsals was a bit of a rude awakening. Surprise! Let's make an ensemble! (Yes, those exercises you did in class - Laban movement theory, Viewpoints, etc... they do have an application!!) They were confused and frustrated and I was feeling them pull away, so we sat down and had a conversation about it.
Grace. They're just tired.
They're here. They want to work. But nothing you can do can fix “tired" except for cancelling a rehearsal or two - which did help a lot.
I've spent an entire year in isolation - I see my partner, grocery store patrons, and the occasional masked friend out on a long wintery walk, and that is it. I've been working from home as best I can, after building a career that requires classrooms and artistic communities. I have had to learn how to creatively problem solve by myself, without a room full of artists brainstorming with me. I have had to build emotional resilience by practicing the discipline of responding to feelings of sadness or depression with movement and/or stuffing vegetables in my face. I have been literally dreaming about the rehearsal room for a year. MU contacted me about this in-person show (yes, before Covid is over, yes, before we've reached herd immunity, yes, before I knew I'd be able to get vaccinated) and I selfishly leapt at the opportunity. As soon as I had the chance to interact without a screen, I used every inch of our three-dimensional space. I want this show to be a moving sculpture, not a movie on a two-dimensional screen or proscenium. I'd do it in the round if I could. I crave anything and everything that is the opposite of Zoom.
I cut down the cast to 8 people. We are masked. We are 6ft away from each other. We are using what I'm calling “jedi acting" - holding hands, giving hugs, and touching faces from a clear distance. (Epic use of space was one of my major bullet points in our initial design meeting.) MU has some excellent safety procedures in place, and our stage management team is on top of it - disinfecting at every break. My cast and crew are in the process of getting fully vaccinated - I received my second shot 4 days ago. I am feeling good about our safety.
I am not feeling too great about the emotional resilience of these young people. We are asking a lot of them. Might we be asking too much? I am intimately familiar with “work hard play hard" theory, with “I'll sleep when I'm dead", with “it's your stupid fault for wanting to be an artist in the first place - you've traded your weekends and financial security for a fun and emotionally fulfilling career. That's the deal."
But another thing this year of isolation has done for me has made me question all of that.
Three days ago I moved rehearsal to Zoom. I really, really didn't want to. I was feverish and suffering through body aches from my second vaccination. I thought about the time I powered through a 5 hour tech rehearsal with an acute flu, and other ugly experiences I've survived. I thought to myself that I should suck it up - my symptoms were merely my immune system working to learn about the virus, and I wasn't “really sick." I looked out the window at the dark sky and freezing rain and thought about the 45 minute walk to the theater - I'm avoiding public transit and rideshares until my vaccination is in full effect.
A small voice in my head whispered to me - you do not have to kill yourself for art.
After a year of responding to sadness with pushups, walks in the sun, cooking meals, and taking naps... I might be learning that you can't prioritize your career over yourself. You can't give if you've got nothing left.
How do I help my students learn this from the role of Visiting Director? I don't think a nicely worded e-mail can serve as an entire year of self-discovery.