You do not have to make end stage theatre right now
James Wenley, who is a local theatremaker I quite admire, has created a theatre resource for Theatrescenes about how to make theatre safely during the pandemic. Read it here. I gave him a couple of bits of detailing for the piece.
I thought I’d expand a little upon what my company Tempest has done during the pandemic regarding COVID safety. I’ve done 30 shows — with my company and without, but I’ll talk mostly about our in-house shows, cause I try not to be too actively dickish to shows that work with us about COVID policy — but maybe I should be? That’s a question for another day.
This article is split up into four parts
- Tempest’s past projects
- Some ones I’ve personally worked on that haven’t been directly linked to us
- Our future projects
- Some suggestions about making COVID-safe theatre.
Feel free to skip down to the bits you’re directly here for, I won’t feel sad.
PAST PROJECTS
Declarations of Love was the show we performed at the start of the pandemic — early March 2020. It was a two-hander, small cast and crew, and as it was at the start of the pandemic for us, we didn’t do anything specific for COVID. I just remember watching the news sort of anxiously every day, but the show happened, and it happened well. Little did we know that we’d go into lockdown mere weeks later and have to do our post-show debrief via Zoom.
Despite the fact that it was a fairly touchy show (kind of hard to socially distance when you’re playing lovers in half your sketches), it is the sort of show that I feel would work fairly well in that weird COVID purgatory we’re currently operating in. Tiny cast, potential for a tiny crew, plus while there’s a handful of weird aspects to the script, it’s not something that requires months of rehearsal cause the content is quite light.
Fairleigh Goode and the Theft of the Great Green Jewel was the first show we performed under COVID conditions. Stuck at home, laid off, with very little to do, I wrote an interactive murder mystery for Facebook Live that took place over three evenings, and the audience got to choose who they thought the murderer was. It was an unique show to make, but gave at least some of my cast a welcome break from sitting at home ruminating, and it certainly did for me. Wholeheartedly COVID-safe, all it required was an internet connection.
Rejected :( — Our short-lived play reading series, this show performed at the end of the month across Aug/Sept/Oct 2020 at Circus Bar. It was a very easy show solely because I wanted to make it COVID-friendly. I bought in a cast, a script, we did one rehearsal, and then we staged the work. It was something that could easily be cancelled or pushed online, though never had to be, and a cast that we could easily rotate. Even though it was only for a couple months, I had a great time.
DETECTED! — After seeing half my friends get their shows cancelled across 2020, I didn’t want to do something too onerous in Fringe 2021, so we did DETECTED!, an improvised murder mystery with a cast of 21 that rotated between shows. Performing outside in the heart of summer, this show was incredibly COVID-safe and suffered no disruption barring me breaking my leg. We did something like ten shows across three weeks, brought theatre to the public and made some profit! It was a great show, and I’m hoping to bring back something similar for 2023.
Tempest Presents! — In pandemic times, online theatre has a future, and so my company now runs an ongoing show called Tempest Presents! where we pull in cast from across the country and do scripts via Zoom that’s livestreamed to FB. Currently we’ve done fanfiction, a feature film, and some tv pilots. It’s not that serious, and it’s easy fun. I recommend it.
Rough Night — Digital theatre, set entirely on social media. This show was an interesting challenge. We shot it in late December 2021 and “performed” it three times across March, April and May 2022, which was definitely for the best as we suffered zero COVID interruption at all. It was wholeheartedly COVID-safe, but I do think it was fairly light on content, so it’s being restaged as Thank You to All My Voyeurs (see below).
Other Shows & Projects
Now Face the World — Initially, I was worried about performing this show. It was staged in the round, so the audience was completely surrounding us, and there was maybe only a metre between us as performers and the audience, which you think would spell a COVID nightmare, right? This was a constant source of stress for me, as I really enjoyed performing in it, but in the end, it was a close contact of COVID that cancelled the show, not COVID within the cast or crew. I don’t think any of us caught it during Fringe 2021, actually. I’d put that down to ventilation and very good audience mask wearing (after we’d prompted them via pre-show message!)
New Zealand Improv Fest — One of the parts about working for and at the NZIF last year was the robustness of their COVID policy. We were all wearing masks at BATS, and everyone was very good about it. It felt like we were in a space where we were wearing them to look after each other, rather than just because we were made to. It was welcoming.
Future Projects
Witchez B*tchez — A show that we performed for Late Night Knife Fight 2021 is coming back to a certain local theatre later in the year. It’s an improvised duo show, with a very small crew. I’m hoping (I AM SO HOPING) that this will make things easier COVID-wise, plus the fact that it’s on in October, NZ’s summer. I will be actively dickish about mask wearing and ventilation during the rehearsal process too. At this point, if we’re making live theatre, there’s got to be some concessions taken, and I’d rather be annoying about masks than catch a potentially deadly or disabling virus.
Thank You to All My Voyeurs — This is a digital work, and a rewrite of my show Rough Night that I mentioned above. Ideally, we would have shot it in person, but I’m still quite leery about doing that, especially since I don’t necessarily think all of that worked especially well in Rough Night. Instead, for this version, we’re splitting the show across audio and video calls, tweets and livestreaming. It’s immersive theatre, and the medium contributes to the show, rather than just being the format we’re using. By doing 90 percent of the show at home, it easily becomes COVID-safe.
SOME SUGGESTIONS
So, I’ve done a ton of theatre during the pandemic, and haven’t yet caught COVID (knock on WOOD). I’ve worked on shows that have had varying degrees of success with their COVID policy/not catching COVID-ness.
Here’s some suggestions on how to make things easier for yourself. (I am not a doctor, I’ve just been doing this for a while.)
- The pandemic isn’t over. The sooner you recognise that, the better. Gaslighting your cast, crew and yourself into believing that things are going to be just fine isn’t helpful. You need to at least have a think about COVID policy. Add it into your typical show planning. These days, it should be as much an important part of your show creation as publicity or set design. COVID is not just a cold and it can and will sink a show if given the chance.
- Consider your rehearsal space. Is it ventilated? Can you ventilate it? What time of year are you rehearsing? (You often can’t open windows in winter at night). Do you need everyone for every rehearsal or can you rehearse in blocks?
- Consider your staging. Does this need to be staged in a traditional theatre? Can you take it off-site, to a new venue, outside, online — to a place which will be more COVID-safe?
- Consider your actors/crew. This is not the time to push through when people are sick or push yourself to burnout. Take breaks. Make sure you eat and drink properly. Don’t let sick actors rehearse. Sure, it might just be a cold, but in general, you shouldn’t be working through that anyway! I’ve done enough shows where the entire cast/crew is disgustingly ill to know that sickness spreads like wildfire through a theatre company. Let yourself rest.
- Use your imagination. This is a prime time to do works that are outside the norm. Shoot the show for those who can’t make it. Stage it differently, use different locations, have rotating casts, have understudies. Obviously, these might differ if you’re a for-profit theatre, but for theatres that don’t rely on the money side of things, this is your chance to go wild.
- Online theatre does not kill the audience experience, it simply changes it. In some respects, it brings it to a demographic that mightn’t be able to usually see the show, thus increasing accessibility. Try it out sometime.
- Wear your masks. Wear your masks. Wear your masks. (Ideally a KN95/N95, rather than a fabric one). They suck. I know they do. But they’re one of the easiest and best ways to reduce the chance of catching COVID. Masking up is exactly how I know I didn’t catch COVID from some of the shows I’ve worked on lately.
Let me be clear, none of this is fun or fine. Working like this is hell. Governments the world over has told us that everything is fine, and everything isn’t, actually. It’s exhausting being gaslighted day in, day out, being underpaid, and getting sick.
It’s only fine for the very small sliver of people:
- who can afford to test every day, to buy masks, to isolate
- who don’t have to go outside to work
- who don’t find their living from jobs that are surrounded by others
- who don’t get that resonance in their soul from audiences, from performance, from playing.
After the last couple months of on and off tentative performances (hell) I’ve made the decision that I’m not working on any ‘traditional’ theatre (big cast, inside performances, etc) anymore unless it has ROBUST COVID policies. My company isn’t creating anything like that until things are more stable with the pandemic.
Let me stress that you don’t have to do 12 week rehearsal periods and perform on end stages. You don’t. Out of the thirty shows I’ve worked on in the pandemic, the ones that have survived full seasons/without sickness have had the policies specified above, and have had people who actively give a damn about pandemic safety; who see masking, ventilation and RAT testing as just another part of the process, rather than an onerous task.
The pandemic isn’t over and the theatre we make needs to reflect that. It is not at all a moral failing to catch COVID, but it is morally awful to put your cast/crew in danger by not considering their health first.
Theatre is hard in general, and especially hard right now. There’ll be an end to all this, but it might not be for a while. We need to adapt, and now is easier than later. You can do this.
