Theater uses creativity to defy pandemic and stage shows
NEW YORK — There’s theater on Broadway. You just have to adjust your sights.
More than a hundred blocks north of Manhattan’s shuttered theater district but on that same famed thoroughfare, an actor recently read his lines from a huge stage.
But there was no applause. Instead, all that was heard was a strange command for the theater: “And cut!”
Tony Award-winner Jefferson Mays was performing multiple roles for a hightech “A Christmas Carol” that was being filmed for streaming this month at the empty 3,000-seat United Palace.
The one-man show is an example of how many who work in theater are increasingly defying COVID-19 by refusing to let it stop their art, often creating new hybrid forms.
“Because it’s such a rollup- your- sleeves business, theater people figure it out,” said Tony Award-winning producer Hunter Arnold, while watching Mays onstage.
Live theater is uniquely tested by the virus, one reason it will be among the last sectors to return to normal. Props and costumes are usually touched by dozens each night, an orchestra is crammed into a pit, backstage areas are small and shared, and audiences are usually packed into seats. New ways are needed.
Mays’ “A Christmas Carol,” which was filmed on a hightech LED set, veers much more filmic than most other streaming theater options and is raising money for suffering regional theaters — one stage production helping others during the pandemic.
Other green shoots include radio plays, virtual readings, online variety shows and drivein experiences that combine live singing with movies. A musical version of the animated film “Ratatouille” is being explored on TikTok.
“We will conquer it. We are theater people. By God, we will conquer it and get it done,” says Charlotte Moore, the artistic director and cofounder of the acclaimed Irish Repertory Theatre in New York City.
Her company has put on a free streaming holiday production of “Meet Me in St. Louis” with a dozen cast members, each filmed remotely and then digitally stitched together. Moore directed it — appropriately enough — from St. Louis.
The cast was mailed or hand-delivered props, costumes and a green screen. They rehearsed via Zoom and FaceTime. A masked and socially distant orchestra recorded the score.
Like many other theatrical hybrids venturing into the digital world these days, it’s not clear what to call it. It’s not technically live theater, but its soul is theatrical.
“It’s not definable in our current vocabulary,” Moore said. “It has to have a new definition, truly, because it’s certainly unlike anything that has been done.”
One of the companies to show the way forward was Berkshire Theater Group in western Massachusetts, whose “Godspell” in August became the first outdoor musical with union actors since the pandemic shut down productions.