“We’ll figure it out.”
I woke up with this phrase in my head. This combination of words seems to erupt daily out of everyone’s mouth. (I’m talking prior to November 6, 2024.) Have you noticed that? Is it just me?
Maybe it’s just me. See, I’m a theatre maker, have been for more than 40 years. In theatre, there are constant puzzles to figure out. When you license a show for production, you get a copy of the script, but you don’t get step-by-step instructions on how to produce and direct it. There are so many things that need to be figured out, things you did not anticipate, or perhaps you did but you and your team said, “We’ll figure it out.” As in -- later.
(Photo credit: Matt Ternus/ Empire Theatre Company, 2023)
For me, that’s a big part of the pleasure of directing. Sure, you could watch a YouTube video of what other theatre companies did, but what’s the fun of that? When we produced The SpongeBob Musical, there was so much joy in the process of figuring out how to make the “volcano” explode and how we might flatten the grumpy old man. How did we do it? Trial and error, my friends, lots of trial and error. If there’s a theatre mantra, “We’ll figure it out” is in the front running. It’s the offspring of “The show must go on!”
Ah, but that last one? That last one is no longer in the lead as far as mantras go, not since Covid. Covid changed the rules. Covid has brought the curtain down a few times in the last four years. Theatre makers have gotten used to “Cancelled” when only blizzards could call up that word in the past (or Class B Basketball finals if you’re in Hatton, ND). I asked some theatre makers in other towns what they do when Covid rears its ugly head among the cast. Someone responded, “What did you do in the past when someone got the flu?” He was being snarky. Snark, aside, his comment did give me pause. The show went on. People took the stage with fevers and raspy throats bathed in Throat Coat and poured themselves into their bed after. However, . . . .
The flu and Covid are not equal. I know people who have “long Covid.” I’ve never heard of anyone with “long flu.” I know someone who lost a sister to Covid. The flu never killed her, so why would Covid? She took no precautions, ended up in the hospital, died there while family did NOT gather around her bed. Sure, Covid and the flu are not the same thing for all people. But how do you know who will be more adversely affected? You don’t, so we take Covid in the cast pretty seriously at our theater. Cancel rehearsals, quarantine cast members, then mask, and hopefully the illness is gone by the time performances begin. Sometimes it isn’t. Three times -- three separate productions -- since 2021, the show did not go on.
As we’ve learned, some things are not figured out, not even among creatives whose job it is to do just that. Who thrive on the challenge of figuring it out.
As this phrase is now used beyond theatre walls, I find myself cringing each time it’s uttered. Because I know now what I didn’t know “Before Times”: We may not figure it out. Or if we do, it may be too late for --
• Our planet which suffers from increased forest fires (1); more powerful and, thus, costly hurricanes/tropical storms (2), accelerated melt of glaciers (3), plastic pollution in our oceans (4), rapid decline of species (5), . . .
• The rights of women to make choices for their body (6, 7)
• Healthcare – access to affordable care, misinformation about vaccines (8, 9, 10)
• The safety of immigrants in a country built on the backs of immigrant labor (11)
• The rights and safety of individuals who identify as LGBTQ+ (12)
• Literacy – as fewer people read books (13) and more people ban them (14), and the rise of A.I. as a writing “tool” (15)
It’s a lot. It’s exhausting. Fact checking the above made me feel even more hopeless than I did when I started writing this! And these issues are just the tip of the melting iceberg. Sure, we could just stay home, get that sour-dough starter working, and hope for some mindless show like Tiger King to distract us. Or . . . we could begin. Act as though our lives depend upon what we do next, because they do. They really, truly do.
We must organize. Pick one issue. Put our heads together, and dare I say it – you know I’m gonna say it: Figure it out!
Look, I’m a theatre maker. It’s not how I make my living, but it is how I live. I’m gonna roll up my sleeves, gather with people who are smarter and more clever than I, and explore alternative routes to success, because even though I now know that the show may not go on – I still believe it must. We owe that to those who come after us. Don’t we?
9 - UNICEF Report: The State of Vaccines | Guttmacher Institute - World's Children 2023 | UNICEF USA