Yesterday, I got to do something I haven't done since February 2020. I got to sit in an auditorium and watch a live production. While the audience was masked and the actors were wearing face shields, it was the closest thing to normal I have seen in quite some time.
Like all sectors of business, the fine-arts world has been hit hard by the pandemic. With singing and wind instruments being high-spread risks, choirs have been forced into zoom boxes or stopped altogether; symphonies have been moved online. Museums have operated with limited capacity, and the lights on Broadway have been darkened for over a year.
My school had, fortunately, already had its spring play last February. It was heartbreaking to watch as other schools had to cancel their March and April performances. It was hard for all involved. While the focus was on seniors, there were also those who were going to participate in their first play and teachers who had worked hard to train their students, only to have the culmination of that training called off. When the school year began in the fall, every school was in a different situation. Some were fully virtual, and plans were made for virtual plays. Some were in hybrid situations. Our fall play involved some kids on stage and a few projected on a screen as they participated from home. There was no live audience; it was streamed online (which involved jumping through legal hoops with the distribution companies).
During this time, I have watched four virtual productions from Fellowship for the Performing Arts. This is a great organization that deserves your support, but some of them were better virtually than others. The Easter Passion was harder for me to watch because I found being sung at by people who are used to singing in a theater is a little overwhelming when it was happening inches from my face. Virtual musicals may not be for me. They used greenscreen to produce The Great Divorce, but that's a complicated story that was made confusing because five actors played nine parts. While I appreciated what they were trying to do, it just didn't work as well on screen as it would on stage. I truly enjoyed Martin Luther on Trial and Shadowlands because the performances of those actors were stunning, but I can't wait to see them live in the future. Those incredible performances will only be enhanced by the immersive experience of the darkened room and the set and the shared feelings you only have with an audience.
What I experienced in our school chapel yesterday was something that cannot be experienced virtually - shared emotional response. When something was funny, we laughed together; and the actors responded to that laughter. That only happens in a live show. While you might laugh at your laptop while watching a virtual performance alone in your living room, you won't laugh as hard or as long (and the actors won't know you are laughing and react to it) because laughter is social. I might cry listening to a sad song on my iPod, but it is not the same experience as an audience being moved to tears by a powerful concert performance. The feeling that comes from a large group of people being silenced by awe is unlike any feeling I may experience on my own.
In ancient times, the arts were created for the purpose of social bonding in the village, sharing culture, passing down oral history, and expressing and receiving emotion. It is still meant for all of those things. If you can, donate to your local theater, visit a museum in a socially distanced way, support your school's arts programs in some way to keep them going during these times. Do that for them. When the pandemic is over, go to a choral performance, a ballet, a musical, a play, or a concert. Do that for yourself and your sense of community.
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