I never imagined I would be writing about the loss of theatre in my life, in all of our lives. Never imagined I would live through a time when theatres are sitting dark, their ghostlights on but empty of people; actors, directors, playwrights, designers, technicians, stage managers, front of house staff and (most essentially) audiences. It has hit me hard. Like many of you, my life has been deeply informed by my love of theatre, and of my dedication to it in my career.
I come by my love of this most social of art forms (its social nature ironically the reason why it has been shut down) through my father Gabriel Prendergast (1934–2000). He and my mother left New Zealand in 1960 so that he could go to theatre school. At that time there was no theatre training in New Zealand, so my parents moved to Bristol, England where he attended the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and then worked for the company. I was born there in 1961 and some of my earliest memories are of going to the theatre, running around on the stage and backstage, and being spoiled by the actors who would put me on their knees in the dressing rooms to watch them put on their makeup.
The seeds of love were planted and I became an avid theatergoer, theatre student, teacher, scholar, critic and writer over the ensuing decades. I have seen plays across North America, in New York, Toronto, Vancouver, San Francisco and Chicago, and around the world in London, Sydney, Auckland, Kuala Lumpur, Tokyo and Cape Town. And now all of these theatres sit in silence.
This pandemic has devastated our community. There will be theatre companies that will not survive, and theatre artists who will have to abandon their vocation in order to survive. Drama education is currently being taught mostly online; a disembodied version of a fundamentally embodied practice. A shadow of itself. I will be teaching a graduate course on early years drama this summer that has moved online. I find myself thinking through the absurdities of how I can adapt tableau or group movement exercises into solo practice, and the simple answer is: I can’t. Roleplay should work, and I suppose that students can still carry out improvised meetings and interviews in-role as we explore a range of story drama structures together. But the collective sensory and movement work will suffer, as will my efforts to move the students toward an understanding of what it feels like to be a part of an ensemble. All together, as one, communal, cooperative, as a whole, amalgamated; these conditions are what we are told we must now avoid, for the sake of our collective health.
I have been watching plays online since all of this started in the middle of March. And I do find that seeing and hearing an audience respond to a play offers some comfort now. But it is a pale imitation of the lived experience of theatregoing. Entire theatre seasons have been canceled, and who knows when we will be lining up on the sidewalk, clutching our tickets in delicious anticipation, crowding into lobbies for a pre-show drink, and crowding out again after the curtain falls. Until there is a vaccine? The average age of a theatergoer is over 50 and the largest group of audience members is in the 65–74 category.Footnote1 How many will take the calculated risk of exposure in large gatherings?
Perhaps the theatre will morph in response to these times. Some hybrid form may emerge that blends technology and live performance, witnessed through a screen, or in spaces that can accommodate social distance. Drive-in live theatre, anyone? Yet I have no doubt of theatre’s survival. Wherever and whenever people gather to tell each other stories, theatre is not far behind. We know that theatres have been closed in the past, in Shakespeare’s day and at other times when plagues in various forms threatened society. It will survive, and the storytellers will have much to write about in response to the times we are living through.
In the end, I suppose I am not grieving so much for the theatre, as I am for myself. For the lost experiences I will never have, sitting in wonderment at the bravery of the actor, the visual and auditory delights of the designer, the wisdom of the playwright, the brilliance of the director. I have been so grateful for these gifts throughout my life, and perhaps even more so when I have been an actor or director or facilitator myself. The theatre will return, and our devotion to this most demanding of art forms will revive. But we will be marked by this time of silence and blackout. We will have stories to tell our students, children and grandchildren about the days when there was no theatre, and the lessons we are still trying to learn from the grief of its absence in our lives.
In the meantime, please enjoy reading through the excellent articles in this general issue. As always, these international authors enrich our understanding of the positive impact of theatre in the lives of young people. I am grateful for their contributions.