How COVID is changing our attitudes around illness in theatre
Broadway’s made a lot of headlines lately for the frequent cancellations, postponements, and closings due to illness in the cast. In today’s Moulin Rouge announcement, a phrase caught my eye: “non-covid related Illness”. That is to say, too many people in the show are sick for the show to go on but it isn’t COVID.
I rarely remember this happening pre-COVID. From high school productions to Broadway, the expectation was that you performed no matter what. I remember friends telling stories of the time they went on stage with a 102-degree fever. We all remember the show we were in where strep throat spread through the company like wildfire. I remember a Broadway ASM talking about the time he held a trash can for a leading lady just offstage as she threw up. She then returned to the stage, performed one of the most physically and vocally demanding numbers in musical theatre, came offstage, and was sick again. These accounts were presented as stories of heroism. Now they’re just horrifying.
Producing theatre in a pandemic has completely changed the narrative around performing while sick. The caution around illness has forced us to take a step back before deciding to perform or rehearse with symptoms. This fall, I canceled a rehearsal for the first time in my directorial career due to illness. Several of us on the production team were out sick awaiting COVID results. None of us ultimately had COVID; it was probably just a cold. It definitely wasn’t a rehearsal that I would have canceled pre-COVID and I’ve certainly worked sicker. But I took care of myself by resting, took care of my cast by not spreading my germs to them, and took care of the show as a whole by not trying to block an intense scene while sick.
It’s a harder decision to make when you’re sick during a performance. Many directors, myself included, would have raised an eyebrow or twisted an arm if an actor would have called out of a performance pre-COVID. Unless you were on your deathbed, the expectation was that you went on no matter what. But the fear of a COVID outbreak has changed our entire society’s view on “taking a sick day”. We shouldn’t have asked sick performers to go on in the past and we certainly shouldn’t now. Yes, we should value the safety of everyone by not exposing them to viruses, but we should also value our actors enough to allow them to rest when ill.
This change in expectation shifts the entire theatrical landscape a little bit. I just directed a community theatre production where an understudy ended up performing in five shows due to the original cast performer having a non-COVID-related illness. And with the exception of a put-in rehearsal alone with a stage manager, this performer had zero minutes of rehearsal for the role before going on. While the understudy did a magnificent job, that’s a mistake I won’t make again in this post-quarantine climate. In my past experience, it was rare for a community theatre performer to go on for a major role in performances. Community theatre performers traditionally don’t usually get a lot of understudy rehearsals; it’s the first thing to fall off in an expedited rehearsal process. But we can’t expect our actors to take care of themselves by calling out if they don’t know that the show is taken care of if they do.
One other major change in our climate is that the illusion of certainty is gone. Most theatre people I know held an unshakable “the show must go on” attitude a few years ago. Theatre is consistently an art form where it feels impossible until it’s done. No matter how treacherous the process seemed, the show always happened. The 2020 season took that notion away from us when nearly everyone had a show canceled or closed early. This was a painful experience but it taught us an important lesson. There is, in fact, life after closing night and there are priorities beyond what happens onstage.
It’s unbelievably disappointing for everyone when a show is canceled or postponed. But there’s a shared understanding between the producers, the production team, the cast, and the audience that any cancellations or postponements are in good faith to keep everyone safe and healthy. The assumption is that anyone who is calling out sick must truly need to and is doing so for the good of the group. And while I hate COVID more than I could possibly say, I have immense gratitude for what we are learning about the importance of valuing health and safety.