Student Blog: If You Really Want Theatre To Change, Virtual Needs to Stick Around...

"There's a kid in the middle of nowhere who's sitting and living for Tony performances, singing and flipping along with the Pippins and Wickeds and Kinkys, Maltidas and Mormons-es, so we might reassure that kid, and do something to spur that kid, 'cause I promise you all of us up here tonight , we were that kid..."

Those are lyrics sung by Neil Patrick Harris in the opening number of the 2013 Tony Awards. And they ring very true for a lot of reasons, the biggest one being that the future of theatre is most likely not in Radio City Music Hall. They may not be attending a prestigious drama program or conservatory. They may not be able to afford it, they may not have the grades for it. They may go to a school with an underfunded arts program. They may not know that the arts is even a viable option as something they can pursue in life. What this comes down to is a matter of accessibility. If you are not exposed to it, if you do not see it, then there is no real way for you to believe that you can be a part of the action. I know this, because I was that kid.

Theatre was not something that I found early in childhood. It was not my first love. It was hardly something that crossed my mind. Like many, to me, theatre was Broadway and Broadway was expensive and Broadway was white and Broadway was far. Those components combined equated to my idea of theatre being something that was unreachable and not at all desirable. It was only due to the universe strangely aligning that I became enthralled with the world of theatre arts. It was completely accidental, and yet it immediately felt right. And even still, I was not in the front row of the national tour of some show that costs $100 for a decent seat. I started falling in love with theatre by watching things like the Tony Awards, small teases of what life in the theatre could be like. Without those moments, I would not be who I am, I would not do what I do, I would not be where I am. I would be waiting for that spark, that rush. It was only because I was able to see something on TV, growing up in Houston, Texas, that was bigger than me, that was dreamlike, that was captivating and intimate, even with a screen and thousands of miles separating us.

This is the power of theatre. It has the potential to change minds, to change hearts and to change lives. But if you are only catering to the same few big city blocks, you are creating a great disadvantage to those who cannot afford to watch dancing cats and masked phantoms. You are building an unclimbable brick wall, serving to one facet of people and ignoring the rest. The pandemic has been tragic, thousands of lives have been lost and millions have been affected. It is the worst period my generation has ever experienced, but, somehow, good things have come out of it.

When the doors of theatres shut down, technology opened and theatre became something that anyone could attend and create, at any time. A company out of New York can put on a virtual show that a kid in Puerto Rico can watch on their phone as many times as they want. That kid is now able to feel that they are part of something. The virtual space has also allowed for theatre-makers from around the world to have an affordable but wide-spanning platform to show their talents. They don't need to knock on doors, they can become an independent entity and create without limits. Theatre, in many ways, is an institution, and like many institutions there are certain kinds of faces you constantly see. There is a set of schools that always seem to pop up in bios, the same kind of story. Why is this? "Inclusive theatre" cannot mean just bringing in new people from the same places. It's unfair and it's a form of prejudice.

With the announcement of Broadway's reopening and the return of live theatre there has been a lot of mixed feelings, for a multitude of reasons (I will get to these in my next blog, trust me). But what I have not heard about is how the rush to get back to "live" things is rebuilding the aforementioned wall. We need to continue producing virtual theatre and allowing virtual spaces to create important, diverse, culturally-representative voices, because the Great White Way is not going to change as fast as they may want you to think. We cannot take theatre away from the kid in Puerto Rico just because we miss walking into a theatre. That kid may be the next Shakespeare, the next Sondheim. But they will never know it if we shut them out and return to the idea that only a certain kind of person from a certain kind of place deserve the chance to have their voice heard. Theatre changes lives. I am excited to see the curtains open again, but only if I know that there's a kid in the middle of nowhere living for the same experience.