Day 295…
During the first two and a half months of this year, I spent 44 days working out of town.
For most of January, I was in Tampa rehearsing a new cast of Jersey Boys for the Norwegian Bliss. Then for the first two weeks of February, I was aboard the ship while it cruised the Caribbean and we got them up and running.
I came home from that and immediately, we put a new actor into one of the lead roles on the Off-Broadway company. I then attended two Board meetings - one for our apartment building and one for Broadway Cares - and had a day of rehearsal towards the end of the week.
The whole last week of February was taken up with a workshop of a brand-new musical. We worked on it in the gorgeous new rehearsal space called Open Jar on Broadway near Times Square. I was supposed to see a musical called Far Horizons on that Wednesday night, but we were too busy with the workshop, so I didn’t go. I figured that I’d get in later. We did a final presentation on that Friday and the next day, I flew to London.
After spending the first two days of that trip on my own exploring the Isle of Jersey in the English Channel, we then spent the rest of the week in a church across from the Drury Lane theatre auditioning people for the next Jersey Boys company aboard the ship.
After work, every night, I went to the theatre.
I saw two Caryl Churchill plays, Tom Stoppard’s remarkable new play, Leopoldstadt, Beckett’s Endgame starring Daniel Radcliffe and Alan Cumming at the Old Vic, a moving John Kani play produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company and then, finally, the beautiful production of Uncle Vanya at the Pinter theatre.
On Sunday, the 8th of March, I flew home and the next night Michael and I went to a gala in Gustavino’s under the 59th Street bridge. We were the guests of the producer of the musical we had workshopped the previous month and, we spent the evening shoulder to shoulder with many people from that experience as well as other friends. Ethan Hawke and his and Uma Thurman’s kids performed a couple of songs on a little make-shift stage that had been set up in the center of the room.
Michael and I had a great time that night, not having the slightest idea that both of us had contracted COVID-19.
Because Michael started feeling bad the very next morning, I have always thought that I picked it up on the trip back from London. There wasn’t enough time for us to have gotten it at the gala. Thankfully, I also don’t think that it was established in us enough that night for us to have given it to the people we were seated with.
The whole week following that, the week beginning March 9, was scheduled to be auditions. All were for Jersey Boys, but the first four days were for NCL with one casting team and the Friday ones were for an Off-Broadway replacement with another team.
By Tuesday of that week, Michael wasn’t feeling well. While I am rarely ill, Michael is almost never ill. He had a headache and a fever and weirdly, he had lost his sense of smell and taste. By Thursday, I wasn’t feeling all that great, myself. I got through the day, but afterwards I sent out an email to the second group. I said that while I wasn’t sick enough not to work the next day, maybe in light of this odd new virus that was apparently now a thing, that we should postpone?
The immediate response was that everyone was fine to just go ahead and do them. Then, after everyone thought about it for a while, we all decided to just delay them for a bit. I was somewhat relieved because as time passed I was getting more and more uncomfortable. That night the aches in my back were so severe that I couldn’t sleep.
Everything shut down that weekend.
Except for the one-night virtual Patti LuPone concert that I did a few weeks ago, I haven’t worked since.
Nine months later, millions of people have been infected. Hundreds of thousands have died. Unemployment has soared. Food banks all across the country are seeing daily lines of hundreds and thousands of people who have become food insecure. Businesses have closed - some permanently.
As the virus traveled, it became apparent that people of color were suffering more than their share of the impact.
The murder of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis sparked a reaction that led to the largest series of Civil Rights protests in history. The marches shone the brightest light we have seen yet on the systemic racism that has infected our country since its founding.
Throughout it all, we have watched our government fail to address any of it. The television conman that the country elected to the Presidency in 2016 has completely failed to lead us through any of this.
While he knew of the dangers of this virus back while I was working in Tampa in January, he did nothing whatsoever with that information. He CHOSE to ignore it. He provided no federal leadership at any point over the course of this year, in fact, just the opposite.
He called the virus a hoax. He flouted rules. He continually belittled those who actually tried to fill the void. And the Republican party stood by him.
So, we voted him out. In three weeks, we will have a new Administration.
The old lame duck one is going to make as much noise as it can during this time as they are prised out of their offices. Screaming election fraud without any evidence whatsoever and conspiracy based on nothing other than the fact that they lost, they are leaving with the least amount of grace possible.
The Republican Senate Majority Leader, true to form, is all that stands now between millions of Americans who need to feed their families and the $1400 in additional stimulus payments that will allow them to do that for many weeks to come. While he is but one man, he is able to do this because all of his craven sycophantic and self-serving colleagues stand behind him.
The election results are due to be certified next week. Some Republican clown is going to hold them up. Not for any other reason than he wants the attention. He wants to run for the office of President, himself, in four years and he wants people to know who he is.
It will not stop President-elect Biden from being inaugurated on January 20th. It will just create a delay in one step of the process along the way.
That’s the year we are leaving behind.
We’ve lost a lot of people. I can’t tell if more people that I knew died this year than they have in other years or if, without the usual distractions of daily life, I just noticed it more. It feels like I was writing something about someone who’d passed every other day.
While some of the people in my orbit certainly died from the virus, most did not. Accidents, and many other afflictions took the overwhelming majority of them from us.
I don’t know that I will ever forget the sight of the make-shift morgues that were set up outside some hospitals around the city this past spring.
I will also not ever forget the sensation of being the only person standing in Times Square - in total silence - no traffic and none of the usual underlayer of sound that comes from air handlers and the other machinery that keeps this city running.
Standing there with nothing but the sound of my own breathing and the occasional chirp of birds in one of the busiest intersections on the planet was as surreal a moment as any I have ever experienced in my life.
Many endured loneliness this year in a way that, perhaps, they had never imagined before.
I was lucky enough to spend the year with my husband. And my cat. I honestly can’t think of anyone else I could have gotten through this with. That we have figured out how to maneuver around a one-bedroom apartment and still give each other some space, seems miraculous.
All in all, parts of this year were truly awful, and parts of it were rather wonderful.
It was, in short, a year. Much of it was unlike any other year that most of us have ever lived through. That, I think, is one of the things that I would put in the plus column. We were challenged, this year, to figure out how to survive in extraordinary circumstances and, if you are reading this, we did.
Whatever this new year brings is going to be different, too. If this year has taught us anything at all it is that we can live with change.
I’ve quoted this beautiful song before, but I am going to close out the year with it again.
So it goes like it goes and the river flows
And time it rolls right on
And maybe what's good gets a little bit better
And maybe what's bad gets gone
Really, what more can we ask of the new year?
I hope that however you mark this evening that you do it safely and with joy.
We start at the beginning of the calendar again tomorrow. There isn’t much written down in mine for the year ahead yet, but I am sure that will change.
It always does.
What you fit in to 24 hours pre-Covid is mind blowing, Richard! Having time to reflect must bring different feelings I imagine. This year has certainly made us all accept and deal with change. We’re all looking forward to the Biden administration and seeing the end of that ‘no words can describe’ man. Wishing you, Michael and cat a much improved 2021
Jx
My last gatherings were theatre board related. We pulled off a benefit on March 8th for 220 some supporters of Remy Bumppo Theatre and miraculously, no reported illness. On March 13th we cancelled a May event for Shattered Globe Theatre...thinking we would do it in the fall, but it became a virtual event at Halloween. We learned a lot about streaming and my tech game is way up. We watched the Patti LuPone this fall to support our Northlight Theatre and it is lovely to know you were minding the store. It was wonderful, poignant and a great way to support theaters across the country. I think I will cry when I am actually able to sit collectively in a darkened theater with the lights slowly going up. The cultural landscape will be different...in some ways for the better. Unlike the last four horrible years, we have an administration that cares about the Arts and I hope we can safely get everyone back into venues to experience the stories, old and new. Thanks for all you are doing...artists will be needed more than ever as we move forward. Now I will get back to playing Candy Land with my granddaughter...which brings quite a bit of joy. We are celebrating NYE at 7 EST and will watch the fireworks show in Dublin, Ireland so she can get to bed on time and I can get a good night’s sleep. Happy New Year to you, Michael and the Cat In The Bowl.