How Covid-19 Made an Effect On This Playwright

 

The Virus that Stopped the World

I have a confession to make right up front: 

I take care of my parents who are both of advanced years. Since having this responsibility, I have found myself becoming more and more afraid of germs, even before pandemic. When directing plays during the Maine fall and winter, I made it clear to my cast that if they felt sick, they should stay home. I had bottles of hand sanitizer everywhere, especially near me. 

You can imaging that the pandemic only exacerbated these feelings within me, and, to be frank, I have been dealing with what is called illness anxiety, or, what some might call being a hypochondriac. Because of this, when I tell you that I believe safety should always come first, you can believe I mean it. I have known three people who lost their lives to the virus, and many others who were quite ill but fortunately recovered.  

I want to make it clear that this post is not a post against the lockdowns that occurred and the activities that were cancelled for public health and safety. I am pro-science and pro-safety all the way.

But I did want to write a post to let people know how the pandemic made an impact on my playwriting career, as a workman playwright who depends on royalties from schools and community theaters. 

I think you can guess the answer:

Obviously, my productions went down. Drastically. Performances were (again, understandably) cancelled. All in all, I would say I experienced easily a 60% drop. And that hurts one financially. But what hurt even more, was that I felt I had at last published a play that could be a holiday hit for me, certainly the biggest hit I would have had up until this point in my writing career.  The play is called A Wicked Christmas Carol (it is published by Playscripts, Inc., and you can order it by CLICKING HERE). Watching theater disappear just as I had a play that I thought could really go somewhere was devastating to me. It is not easy to have a hit when you're in my market. 

As you must know if you are theater folks reading this, many wonderful groups did their best to keep the spirit of live theater alive using Zoom technology. That is one way I maintained some royalty payments at all!  In fact, a theater group in London did a Zoom production of A Wicked Christmas Carol (did I mention you could order the play by CLICKING HERE). I thought this was an ambitious undertaking---the play is a solid 2 hours long, which isn't necessarily easy to maintain on Zoom. But, this wonderful group really made something special and unique from it, using the medium in creative ways. And certainly one major positive from the entire situation is the fact that this Maine-based playwright who never could have afforded to travel to London to watch the production, was able to watch it live streaming, which was by far the highlight of my Christmas season. 

I suppose I could wind up being divisive here, but it is my blog these are my feelings: 

If we want live theater to come back, we've got to bring it back safely. That means cast members who are old enough, should be vaccinated. And there is nothing wrong with a theater telling the public that audience members must show proof of vaccination, and still wear masks. With the Delta Variant, we can't be too careful. This is how Broadway is proceeding, and I believe it is the smart way to proceed. There should also be some kind of air replacement system that keeps air circulating in the theater. Ventilation is important.

Again, this isn't about politics, or about being divisive, it is about public health and having the things we love once more, and helping artists like me to make a living again. Please get vaccinated and please mask up, so that when Christmas rolls around we don't have another outbreak, forcing all of the Christmas productions to be cancelled. 

And speaking of Christmas productions, I know of a great Christmas play. You can learn more about it by CLICKING HERE. 

Please keep theater alive moving forward by being safe. Overcautious, even. Because as lovely as Zoom can be, we all know it is not quite the same thing as being there in theater experiencing it all together. 

Let's make that happen.