at a time like this??
By: Charles Nelson... Really
Tags: Dreams, Arts And Entertainment, Broadway, Theatre, Arts And Culture

at a time like this??

Back in August I watched the second preview of the first Broadway play to come back after an industry-wide 18 month hiatus. While it felt triumphant, and the play was bold and quite fresh (Pass Over by Antoinette Nwandu) — just what the doctor ordered — it was far from the greatest feeling in the world — which is how much of theatre social media was classifying that feeling. No judgement, just… maybe needs some exploration.

Anyway, half of the seats and 36 theatres were empty. I spent a large portion of the play staring at my fellow audience members. We were all vaccinated and wearing masks, but were we going to infect each other? Was this worth it? The empty seats weren’t just sad to see — they stung. They silently mocked all of us. The plush, red, velvet, too-close-together seats I loved so much as a kid were antagonising me: “Why are you here? Who do you think you are, that you can just enjoy a play right now? A PLAY? In this climate?” As much as I mean this in jest, I constantly ask myself, even now, what is the purpose?

Broadway was beginning their big ‘reopening.’ The season consisted mostly of the plays that had been on before the end of the world. Most of those shows are relatively pointless and controversial with no new music, no new stories, nothing new to say about the world in February 2020, and certainly nothing new to say a year and a half later. You can’t repurpose a musical that doesn’t fit one period to fit an entirely new one.

The irony is most of these shows would close or get cancelled (take that as you will) if not from financial woes, then from yet another wave of illness just a few short months later. I wonder if any of them will even be remembered or if they are each just a waste of about 14 million dollars. And whose money was being wasted? And why are they giving it to these thoughtless musicals and plays?

In early September I moved to the UK to discover new means of theatre-making. I wasn’t bored of New York; I am not an asshole. I needed to see how it was being done somewhere else because I could not see myself pretending to want to create amidst the confused commercial theatre sect that is Broadway. Theatres were wide open here so I took advantage of that. I saw 2–3 plays a week until mid-November. They were all plays about outsiders and/or vengeance.

The first few plays I’d ask the people around me to please put their masks back on. Oh honey, people here were fatigued and it showed. Early October I saw The Normal Heart at the National. I knew it was going to be a long and emotional evening. I took my mask off not even a quarter of the way through. Most people around me had. I had been jabbed three times by then. What was the purpose of the shots if I still had to wear my mask in fear? Who was I protecting and why am I protecting them?

Then I realised that I did not know why I was there. I was enjoying the performance. But, realistically, who is going to remember any of this? (Not to discredit Dominic Cooke & crew. It was an exceptional production.) Who is going to remember any of the theatre that has opened in the last few months? Not the titles of the plays but the nuance of them. Is any of it good? Or was it just made with the energy of, ‘let’s do this,’ ‘we’re finally back, how exciting to not be on my couch anymore painfully watching Zoom performances?’ It all seems so put on.

The Tony’s this year were an absolute sham. Sort of like the recent season of Drag Race UK. Sure, the top queens ended up turning a lot of tricks, looks, and laughs, but on an actually good season none of them would have made it to the finale. I am sure some of the shows nominated for Tony’s were good. And Danny Burstein and Adrienne Warren are two of the brightest stars in town who deserve the world. But they weren’t the awards we used to dream about as kids.

I am not one to wax poetic on the past. I do not think we need a revival of the Golden Age of Broadway because that era was mad problematic and run by the men who gifted us Rudin & Drabinsky and their protégés. I also know that of course kids today (the ones who have a Paramount Plus subscription) watched the awards and dreamed of one day accepting one, just as thousands of us had before them, or still do. Dreams are subject to the time they exist in. It is all relative.

I do, however, believe that there can be a Golden Age again. There will be. I don’t think it will come for another 15–20 years. once we have been able to process this mess. When current leadership is ousted. When new, informed, not entirely didactic, but not fully unhinged leaders arise and take the helms. When new theatres are built that aren’t run and funded by men who donated to Trump’s campaign. When new theatres are built and cultivate some fucking good shit. Once people remember that the reason we do this is to create. For fun. And make some money so we can keep creating. Sure there is healing, there is mourning, suffering, release, meditation, dreaming, awakening — catharsis. That feeling that drives us. It is all part of it. It’s why we do it. For us and for an audience.

But if your mindset is, let’s put this Alanis Morissette musical back on Broadway because it will heal people in this time of great need… maybe take a step back and reevaluate what and why and how you are bringing theatre into the world. We can be productive and imaginative at the same time.

We can protect and help each other heal. I do not think that the means of the past are meant to guide us. They can inform us. But we must use what we have now to proceed. If, and only if, there is a good (productive, helpful, creative, justifiable, imaginative, life-changing, world-rearranging, non-tangible) reason.