Student Blog: Diary of a Pandemic Actor

Currently I am in rehearsals for a play called Spoon River Revival through the Boston College Theatre Department. It is a compilation of poems written by Edgar Lee Masters and was contrived in order to replace our annual spring musical, which was supposed to be Spamalot. We are lucky enough to be able to perform Spoon River Revival in a live format. The rest of the cast and I have the chance to be onstage together as long as we keep appropriate distance and wear masks. We have taken a few steps in order to make this work. We have been wearing clear masks and, honestly, they have been working great! They don't fog up or anything and it is so nice to get to see the bottom half of all of my friends' faces again! You start to forget what they look like after not seeing them for a whole year. In order to keep six feet apart, as we are blocking, our stage manager walks around with a six-foot-long stick and measures out the space between all of us, making sure that we have our safety bases covered. While this does take some extra time and require us to adjust our blocking accordingly, it is still so worth it in order to perform live.

It has been so amazing to get to create theatre again and perform in person with all of my friends. While we may not be able to have an audience for the shows and have to livestream it instead, just the act of performing with other actors in front of a house (even if it is empty) makes a world of difference. It makes me feel a bit of a sense of normalcy, which is something I have not felt in regard to the arts in a long time.

Seeing some theaters start to reopen and do in person performances makes me very hopeful for the return of all live theatre in the near future. However, in the meantime, I really respect the efforts of all theatre makers who are trying to make anything happen. I was talking with my cast and director yesterday and we were saying how some schools were doing no theatre at all and how lucky we are to be able to still perform. I understand why not all schools want to put on performances. It is difficult to find the means to make safe pandemic theatre work and entertaining. It is only with a lot of effort from people behind the scenes that we are able to make it possible. I want to take the time to acknowledge everyone who has been involved in making pandemic theatre possible. It is no easy feat, and you are appreciated so much more than you know. Because of you, we are able to continue doing what we love and putting smiles on other people's faces. These are crazy times, but I always am able to look forward to my rehearsals and making such amazing art with even more amazing people. Soon enough, we will all be performing live and without masks again, but for now we have to make the best of our situation.

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