San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
LIVE SHOWS
the Agarita chamber ensemble, another performing arts organization that has done some live performances. So she knew to attach her mask to her chin with fashion tape; otherwise, it rides up while she plays, making it hard to see her sheet music.
San Antonio music and theater artists who have been able to perform for in-person audiences are extremely aware of how fortunate they are.
Rosa Gardner was glad to be able to get back on stage at the end of last year for Magik Theatre’s production of “Snow White,” but there was a bittersweet aspect to it.
“I recognize what a huge privilege it is to be able to do it right now when the majority of us can’t,” Gardner said. “It hurts my heart that so few of us can be working right now onstage.”
As with much of life in the pandemic era, it was an altered experience: “It’s like you’re doing something that feels very normal, but everything surrounding it is not normal,” she said.
Magik instituted a full slate of safety protocols. “Snow White” was produced with a cast of two — Gardner and Bobby Tschoepe — and the only other people permitted backstage were the director and the stage manager. Everyone was masked, and that included the actors’ time onstage. It called on them to do more with their eyebrows than they might have, since the lower halves of their faces were obscured.
“No matter how little you’re moving around onstage, it still somehow was taxing,” Gardner said. “We’d have to take breaks — I needed to go outside and take off my mask to breathe for a little bit. It was a bit of an adjustment.”
They gave a couple of performances — one with no live audience and one with a small, socially distanced audience. Both were filmed, then edited together for a streamed production that patrons can rent at magiktheatre.org.
Having an audience respond in real time made a big difference, said Gardner, who also has done some virtual performances.
“We rely so much on that energy,” she said. “It’s not just an actor thing, where I want applause — that energy you get from them, where you can tell they’re with you, is very different from staring into a web cam and hoping they are. I certainly
prefer the version with feedback.”
Performers in the Woodlawn Theatre’s occasional cabarets have played to both live and virtual audiences. In December, they did a series of holiday cabarets in which they streamed one night and played to a small audience the next. Capacity was capped at 50, allowing everyone to spread out in the 260-seat space.
Most of the numbers were solos, but there were occasional duets, for which the performers stood at least six feet apart and faced away from each other.
“It’s hard on performers,” said Christopher Rodriguez, the theater’s executive and artistic director, who hosted the shows. “It’s hard to not do what you’ve been taught for so many years when it comes to performing.”
Even with all of the changes that have had to be made to mitigate risk, including sanitizing microphones and swapping
out covers between songs, it’s worth it to revive, in some form, an experience that both performers and audiences have missed, Rodriguez said.
“It takes us back to the feeling of why we do what we love so much,” he said. “Any time we have a kid walk in the door, or a performer come in, it’s like we’ve given them a shot of adrenaline. Some people get emotional. They know it’s where they’ve wanted to be for the past year. It’s a sense of being back home, essentially.”
Classic Theatre went all-in on live performances starting with a production of “Macbeth” in October. The company now is working on “Antigone,” slated to play April 8-25 at the San Antonio Botanical Garden.
Kacey Roye, who played Lady Macduff and other roles in “Macbeth” and will be appearing in “Antigone,” said she was grateful to be back onstage but found it difficult at first to adjust to some safety measures.
“When I was in rehearsal, I felt very inhibited by the masks,” she said, adding that it was also hard not to be able to touch her castmates. “I’m such a touchy-feely actor — I need to be able to grab people. I’m very physical.”
Over time, though, she got used to all of that, including figuring out when to pull down her mask to speak and when to pull it back up.
“Just like with choreography and with blocking, once you put that other element in your brain, it kind of becomes second nature,” she said.
For performers, just the act of getting together with others to pursue what they love to do raises spirits, whether they
have an audience or not. The Guadalupe Dance Company, which is part of the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, spent much of last year rehearsing over Zoom. Late last summer, they started getting together from time to time for in-person rehearsals, a big treat for the close-knit company.
“We were like giddy children, joking and laughing and having a blast,” said dance director Jeanette Chavez. “It didn’t matter that there wasn’t an audience.”
They did end up with one. Rather than rehearsing indoors, the dancers worked in the parking lot of the Guadalupe to allow everyone to spread out.
“There’s a panaderia across the street, and people going to the bakery were cheering for us and honking,” Chavez said. “It was pretty cool.”
The dancers streamed a few shows last fall, including a Día de los Muertos production and a staging of “La Pastorela,” the traditional holiday show about the nativity. Parents of the younger dancers taking part were invited to watch. And, just like with the rehearsals, they also drew an audience of passers-by.
“Because we were filming outdoors, people would come and watch,” said education director Belinda Menchaca. “People walking down the street would applaud. It was very endearing to see people react to something, and to see that they were excited to see performers and dancers and hear music.”
Picture this: a 1980s sports car with bald tires sinking into the soft sand at a Bolivar Peninsula beach.
Enter my mother — the type of woman who would wrestle a buffalo to protect someone she loves — and her friends on their way back to a rented beach cabin. The guy driving the car yells toward them, something like, “Hey, I’m stuck.”
Without a second thought, my mom and her friends dug out the tires and deadlifted the car out of the sand. The guy waved and drove off.
When she tells this story, she says “Texans are just strong like that.”
Strong-willed and fit, Texans have been ranked America’s physically strongest people based on statistics derived from the online forum Open Powerlifting.
Lift Vault, a resource for powerlifting, bodybuilding and strength training, analyzed five years of data. By breaking down three main powerlifting categories — the squat, the bench press and a deadlift — the company found Texas is one strong Lone Star.
In this study, Lift Vault examined competitive powerlifters from all 50 states. The average squat performed by a Texas competitor is 687 pounds; average bench press is 438 pounds; and average deadlift is 742 pounds. The rankings are based on wilks, a score used to compare relative strength across weight and gender, according to the company.
Shelby Saylor, association director of healthy living of
YMCA of Greater Houston and a personal trainer, is not surprised that Texans are the strongest Americans.
“There’s just a culture here that is very inclusive of weightlifting, which is something that has reemerged over the past five-10 years as a primary form of exercise,” Saylor said. “Deadlift, bench press and squat are really what tell us where someone’s full health is and how well they perform as an athlete.”
Texans excel at exercises that encompass what they do in daily life, Saylor said. It makes sense, since the state was founded on ranches and oil patches, she added.
“It was a lot of hard labor, maybe we’re genetically predisposed to being stronger for those reason,” she said. “Lifting a bale of hay, working on a ranch, you’re doing those types of movements.”
Population size should be factored into the ranking.
According to the data, Texas is followed by Virginia, New York, California and North Carolina in strength. The bottom five states on the list are Montana, West Virginia, Wyoming, Vermont and North Dakota.