San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
‘I wondered what I was going to do to survive’
To put it simply, Chanel Mahoney has one concern with everything shut down in the performing arts: “How am I going to keep the lights on?” Mahoney and the cast and crew of Cygnet Theatre’s “House of Joy” had just wrapped up opening night in March when the coronavirus pandemic shuttered everything, from theatrical productions to classical music concerts. Luckily, Cygnet, unlike many arts organizations, kept the entire cast and crew of “House of Joy” on the payroll until the end of the run. After that, “we were all laid off.”
Theater workers “already don’t make a lot to begin with. I was living essentially paycheck to paycheck. I wondered what I was going to do to survive,” said Mahoney, who was wardrobe supervisor for “House of Joy.” “I have student loans. I have rent.”
“Working in theater is my passion,” said the 32-yearold Mahoney, who’s attending San Diego Mesa College pursuing a fashion design degree that she hopes to one day parlay into a career in costume design. “It was devastating to see a professional production have its opening night and then be
forced to close. Of all the shows I’ve had the opportunity to work on, I have never seen a more beautiful project than ‘House of Joy,’ ” the Madhuri Shekar play about an elite squad of female guards who protect the emperor’s imperial harem in 17th-century India.
She doesn’t have health insurance, so she’s applied for Medi-cal. And her application for unemployment got approved, but she still feared the short-term ramifications of the shutdown: “I was living on 25 percent of what I was originally making. How was that going to work?”
Mahoney, who lives in National City, admits she had a “delayed reaction” to the harsh reality of being unemployed in the middle of a pandemic. “Originally, when everything shut down and we were told to shut down ‘House of Joy,’ all I wanted was to keep busy, so I told myself: ‘I’ll just sew. It’ll make me feel better.’ ”
So she sewed. A lot. Masks — for friends and for her father and his co-workers, who went back to work much sooner than many. “But everyone was doing the same thing,” she said, adding that long lines at Joann Fabric and a shortage of elastic for masks “just ended up stressing me out. The one thing that was supposed to make me happy was stressing me out.”
So she found other ways to deal with stress.
“I used to go to 24 Hour Fitness to train for 5Ks,” said Mahoney, who also is a certified cosmetologist and makeup artist. “Last year, I signed up for 5Ks this year, but all of them were canceled. So now I’m hula hooping. I also started learning more about photography. I read a lot and play video games with my boyfriend. I’m baking like a psycho. I’ve baked everything on my Pinterest board.”
All that has helped, she said, but then on some days, worry creeps back in.
As a costume designer, Mahoney has a couple of San Diego productions under her belt: “Marie and Rosetta” at Cygnet and last year’s Opera NEO summer productions. But, she said, “honestly, I’m worried if I will get to work in my field again. Everything is going to be so different. I know Broadway won’t be back until 2021. It’s already challenging enough to be a costume designer in San Diego. When everything reopens — whenever that is — everyone is going to be vying for the same jobs. You know when they say, ‘If you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life?’ That was my life. I loved waking up every day and designing and making beautiful things. After all this, with debt and bills piling up, is that going to be enough?”
As quickly as she rattles off a list of concerns, though, Mahoney admits “I don’t have time to be depressed about all this,” she said, adding that with the $600-aweek federal unemployment benefit gone, things will be more difficult. “But I need solutions, and being depressed just takes time away from finding answers.”
So, like many others, she’s focusing on the future — and on things she can control.
“I have learned different ways to cope,” she said. “I guess a lot of times, especially in theater, there are many things that are just out of your control. Many things right now are out of my control. So I just have to find different ways to let go. I can’t control everything. It sounds a little self-centered, but through all this, I have learned to take care of me first. I have also realized the importance and value of certain friendships and relationships. People who have reached out and said that we are all in this together. People who call and check in just to say they care.”
Through it all, she said, she can’t help but miss theater.
“I miss working with my crew,” she said. “I miss the camaraderie and the family unit and just being there — together. And being backstage. We were really handson for ‘House of Joy.’ There weren’t wigs, so I had to style the women’s hair. I miss having those moments and talking to them — and helping them tell a story . ...
“I don’t want to lose sight of my dreams and my goals,” she added. “I don’t want to give up my passion for creativity and settle . ... Settle because of this pandemic? No.”
Someday soon, Mahoney said, there will once again be time “to create something beautiful.”
“I was living on 25 percent of what I was originally making. How was that going to work?”