Post 10 - March 21, 2020
Day 10…
OK, I discovered yesterday that, sadly, the dolphins in the Venice canals were not true. The pictures we have been seeing of them are from Sardinia which is 100+ miles away. Still, the reports of clearer water and being able to see the fish are all apparently true. Give it another week or two - the dolphins will be back.
We have all been going back and forth about where the best place to ride this out is. Stay in NY or get out? Staying in NY is what feels right to me. When 9/11 happened, I was out in PA. I couldn’t get back into the city for three days because all of the bridges and tunnels were closed. I wanted to be here. It’s home. Yes, it will be rough here because of the concentration of cases, but there are also more resources here than in rural areas. I don’t know that this is the right answer, but it’s the one we are going with… for now.
New Yorkers are nothing if not resilient and resourceful. Out of protective masks? We will make them! IATSE union wardrobe members and stitchers have teamed up with Governor Cuomo to make face masks for medical personnel. We got no federal help in 9/11 and sorted it out. Getting no help now, we are on it. If you are on twitter go to @IATSElocal764. There is a google doc to fill in and join the effort. I think that this is why I want to stay in NY.
JERSEY BOYS made the tough call yesterday to suspend the rest of this season’s US tour. They had been going week to week but with so many venues cancelling it didn’t make any sense. We also heard that two incoming Broadway plays, THE HANGMAN and the revival of WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF have shuttered for good. The problem is that without any income from ticket sales, there is no way to cover any expenses. There is still rent to pay to the theatre owners and for equipment used on the show - lighting, sound etc.. When you open a show, you usually have advance ticket sales - you know that people are going to come. You can’t use that money yet, but you know that the following week, you are going to cover your expenses given how many seats you’ve already sold. Not only are there no more people buying tickets, but the tickets sold for the cancelled performances have to be refunded. For a show like HAMILTON, say, there are tickets sold for a year from now when, hopefully, we will be back up and running. Smaller shows and ones just starting out don’t have that. Once this is over, most shows will need to start from scratch. It will also take a while for people to feel comfortable about congregating again.
In my experience, when noting JERSEY BOYS, it takes about 6 weeks for an actor to forget that they have ever performed the show a different way. By that I mean, say the line onstage is, “…on my new boat. Quiet and peaceful in the knowledge that none of this could have happened… without me.” This is a Bob Gaudio line at the end of the show. There are two bits of physical direction in this line. On the word “Quiet” they have to start crossing to stage left. They then have to look upstage at Nick and Frankie on “none of this could have happened” and then back at the audience for “without me”. The challenge for each individual actor is to make sense of that and make it seem like that’s just what they decided to do in the moment. Sometimes, after a while, and for whatever reason, I’ll watch a performance and the actor will start crossing a few words earlier or a few words later and I have to give them the note that they need to take their first step on the word “Quiet”. (I don’t know why I am picking on the Gaudio’s here, lol, this isn’t about anyone specific - just a for instance”.) Now, if it has only been a couple of weeks since I’ve seen them, the response is, “oh yeah, I was trying something new.” Or “oh yeah, I forgot.” If it has been a couple of months since I’ve seen them the response from the actor sometimes the response is more like, “so that’s a change?”. They’ve been doing it the “wrong” way for a couple of months and have forgotten that it was ever any other way.
All of this is to say that as a country, we are now all doing different blocking. We are consciously behaving in a different way through self-isolation and social distancing. We are eating at home - exclusively. We will all soon be shopping online - exclusively. We are not gathering in groups of more than 10. We are setting up FaceTime dinner dates and Zoom meetings. It all seems really strange now, but in 6 weeks it isn’t going to feel so strange. We are going to be used to it. It’s going to feel normal and it is going to become muscle memory. When all of this passes, (and it will) we won’t be the same. We are going to have to either re-learn past behaviors or leave them behind and embrace the new normal. After months of telling us to stay away from each other, we are going to have to consciously learn how to get close again - how to be comfortable in a crowd.
Human beings are incredibly adaptable. Look around, could anybody have predicted a month ago how radically our society would change?
This isn’t something to be scared of. Yes, it is all unknown and weird, but it’s also fascinating. We are living through history. We are in one of those moments that become markers on the timeline for one reason or another. WWI, the Spanish Flu, WWII, the British Invasion, 9/11. Sometimes the change is cultural (like with the Beatles), sometime behavioral. Nobody LIKES change. It’s uncomfortable and scary. It makes us look at everything anew and have to adapt. And we are adapting. We are changing. What on earth is going to happen? Pass the popcorn! (but don’t touch it)
The NCL Bliss is now in the Port of Miami. The JERSEY BOYS company and crew are still awaiting disembarking instructions. Given the travel restrictions and the fact that they live all over the world it is going to take a minute to repatriate everybody. Happy that it seems to be underway. They are now under much the same restrictions that we are - no groups bigger than 10, social distancing. Welcome back to the world.