Student Blog: Live in Living Color - Returning Back to Work

The city that never slept fell quiet in 2020. The storytellers of the world were suddenly placed into confinement. The only occupants of the dance studios and the audition rooms were the tumbleweeds of crumpled sheet music and forgotten ballet tights. Our muscles grew tighter and our stamina grew weaker. An entire industry...noiseless. In May of 2021, a switch was flipped. The marquees turned back on and all eyes went to the actors. The time we had been craving had finally come, but as I sat in my Chicago apartment staring at my tripod I had to ask myself, "Am I ready?"

The industry that I entered back into this spring bore no resemblance to the one I had left behind when I fled the city in March of 2020. Gone were the days of waiting for my number to be called, and getting up at the crack of daylight to vie for a chance to be seen. Ring lights and self-tapes and tripods, oh my! We aren't in Telsey anymore, Toto.

I had one chance to perform live during the midst of the pandemic, in an immersive walk-through experience at school. But performing inside a plastic-wrapped bubble, wearing a mask, for an audience of eight, was certainly an adjustment from what I remembered. I was lucky to have the opportunity to create art in a safe and unique way, but I longed for the feeling of an ensemble moving as a unit on the stage, blinded by the stage lights, and feeling the addictive energy of the audience.

When the email with an offer for what I had been dreaming of came, I was overjoyed, and at the same time petrified. Did I still know how to memorize lines? Could I retain blocking and choreography? Would I produce sound when being asked to sing? The short answer was yes, these skills did live on in my body during the year of pause, but I wasn't prepared for the things that did not.

It is no secret that actors work at night. Unless you are working at a theme park, odds are you will not be getting home until 11 PM or 12 AM. Once your body has grown accustomed to this, it is no problem, but when you have been employing a 10 PM bedtime for the last year, you find yourself waking up face down on your laptop with a bowl of mac and cheese still sitting on your bed. Rinse and repeat, and suddenly your sleep cycle is down the drain, and your computer has a residue of sparkly face powder.

My physical stamina had taken a toll, (hello crossing the stage in one count of eight while trying to belt out alto harmonies). But the real toll had been taken on my mental stamina. A year of quiet had allowed imposter syndrome to take root in my body, and I had forgotten the stamina that it takes to complete the mental gymnastics of learning an entire musical in a matter of days, while also balancing social, work, and outside responsibilities. I was overwhelmed, scared, and frankly just plain tired.

It felt like trying to complete a puzzle with the pieces in the wrong space. If you let all the pieces pile on top of one another, you are never going to find the piece you need. In order for the pieces to fit into place, you need to spread them out and give them their own space, so that you can identify where they need to go. All the elements I needed to succeed were there in front of me, but without prioritizing my time, and separating all the elements of my suddenly crowded life to give myself space to breathe, I was not going to be able to thrive.

The events of March 2020 happened suddenly. We ran to our homes, bolted the doors, and waited. Life moved in slow motion. Trips to the outside world happened every couple of weeks, and social interaction became a joyous, frightening, and sparse occasion. I grew accustomed to my life moving at the speed of a 3-hour play, set in a living room, with no intermission. Our sudden pivot-turn back into normal life was a shock to my system that I am still adjusting to. I doubt things will ever return to what they were. I'm still going to need a tripod and a backdrop, but I am also going to need my book of sheet music, and an audition outfit that isn't just from the waist up.

I wasn't anticipating the adjustment that I had to go through to get back to work, but every second has been worth it to get back on the road to live in-person theatre. The COVID-19 tornado blew us far away from the magic of live theatre, but there is truly no place like home.

- Dylan Kerr