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Like everything else Covid-19 is messing with -- our work, our favorite restaurants, our quest for bread and toilet paper -- the nasty little virus is complicating our relationships. In some ways, our relationships and how we relate, are at the heart of the complications. Being near each other is the way the virus spreads. Staying away from each other flattens the curve and slows the pandemic. The oxymoron of the moment is social distancing. I get it. I'm onboard. By now, most of us are onboard. But for each of us there was a line, a moment --or many -- when the sands shifted and ideas about what Covid-19 would mean, became reality.
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Found on Tuesday's walk through Washington Heights. There is love out there people. Sending some your way.  At 6:30pm on Friday the 13th, 2020, the proverbial butterflies should be fluttering in the bellies of Pseudolus and the rest of the company of A Funny thing Happened on the Way to the Forum at Schenectady Light Opera. The nervous excitement, the “roar of the greasepaint,” the flowers and chocolates, the hugs and back-pats, the calls of “good show” and “break-a-leg” should abound. There should be stretches and vocal warm-ups and ushers sorting out programs. There should be rousing words of encouragement by a director who has been working on the show for not just the six week rehearsal period, but for six months.
At 8pm on Friday the 13th 2020 the lights should come up on an intricately designed set that was constructed, painted and decorated over weeks by a team of volunteers working long nights, after full-time day jobs. Actors should appear in beautiful costumes, planned, fitted, scavenged and sewn by another dedicated crew of volunteers who have given their time and talent for free. There should be music, led by a music director who for months to has been teaching and perfecting and encouraging her musicians and cast. And there should be performers, some of whom have waited years to this play their roles; who have practiced music and lines and dances for countless hours, just to make people laugh and forget their troubles for a while. At 8pm on Friday the 13th, audiences were promised A Comedy Tonight! Weighty affairs would just have to wait-- as the song says. But as we now know, those affairs wouldn't wait after all. They couldn't. The outside world would intrude on comedy and tragedy alike, and, in a rare instance, the show – the shows – would not go on. |
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