San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
What artists, producers say one year later
When I interviewed theater artists and producers in late February and early March of last year, I often felt as if I was asking someone to peer off a cliff into an abyss and tell me what they saw.
A year later, I wondered if the scene still looked like an abyss, so I asked five of my early pandemic interviewees to revisit those conversations with me, that we might measure the distance between then, now and what’s to come.
Chris Burrill, executive managing director at Hammer Theatre Center
Then: Having booked the Swiss mime troupe Mummenschanz to perform “You & Me” for two nights, the Hammer on San Jose State University’s campus decided to use its newly acquired highdefinition, lowlight camera — which had previously only been used to feed shows into the lobby for latecomers or to make archival recordings — to livestream via Vimeo.
“This is a singlecamera, lockedoff position,” Burrill said at the time. “That is partially the reason for the $10 price for this ticket. It ain’t gonna be fancy.”
Since then: The Hammer has invested in four more cameras and video direction, and camerawork training for its staff, allowing for angles, elevation shots, cuts and crossfades. It’s also rebranded its venue as a livestreaming rental facility, booking dance companies such as New Ballet, San Jose State University’s Dance Program and San Jose Dance Theater.
Looking ahead: Burrill believes audiences will still want digital content for at least another 18 to 24 months; he also plans to stream the venue’s content for schools.
Now, in an effort to lure people back to downtown San Jose, he’s working on a proposal (for both a corporate funder and the city) to create “instead of a farmers’ market, a performers’ market,” a free outdoor event with a rotation of artists on various stages. The Hammer’s cameras will come outside to livestream for audiences who prefer to stay at home.
“I’m going to make this equipment pay,” Burrill says.
Heather Orth, actor in Foothill Music Theatre’s “The Mystery of Edwin Drood”
Then: Orth, who played Princess Puffer in the musical, found out that she had given her last performance after the fact. Later, the cast went back to the theater one last time to collect their belongings.
“We didn’t do a cast singalong,” she recalls, “but we
did do a cast drinkalot.” Since then: Orth says that because she got no real closure, the lines, the staging, the muscle memory from “Drood” have stuck with her. For her, that knowledge usually fades in a couple of months.
“There’s still some part of me that every once in a while goes, ‘Shouldn’t we be driving up to Foothill right now to go put on a wig and a corset and pretend to be British for strangers?' “she says. “It’s almost like that odd feeling you get every once in a while that you left the oven on.” Looking ahead: “Even though it’s only been a year, it feels so emotionally far away from the time when I was a person who stood onstage and made noises while people looked at me that I almost can’t conceptualize what it is to go back to that,” Orth says. “I hope the joy of it is still there. I hope that it still takes me out of myself the way it always has; it gives my very anxietyridden brain a chance to not have to worry about being Heather for a little bit.”
Chris Lorway, executive director of Stanford Live and Bing Concert Hall
Then: Stanford Live was among the first Bay Area arts organizations to cancel any performance; it had artists scheduled to come from China for Yang Liping’s “Rite of Spring” Feb. 2122, 2020. By the time I talked to Lorway on March 4, he had lost track of and had to pause to count how many additional shows he was canceling that day alone.
Since then: Stanford Live partnered with Jamie Meltzer, who runs Stanford’s MFA program in documentary film, to create a series of 10 films — which are still being released — that blend concert with performer interviews about being an artist during the pandemic. He emphasizes that films are not performance captures but true feature films, driven by cinema’s storytelling techniques.
“We did a Garrick Ohlsson and Beethoven piece where we actually built a circular dolly around the piano, and we shot in a single shot, so it just ebbs and flows as he plays,” Lorway says.
Other participants have included Kronos Quartet and Marcus Shelby.
Looking ahead: Even if governments limit venues to a fraction of their capacity for many months, Stanford Live can make use of the openair Frost Amphitheater, which can normally accommodate 8,000.
Lorway plans to start with movie screenings, followed by invitations to community partners.
“We want to make sure we get our frontofhouse and audience protocols in place before we layer in the dual backofhouse and front-of-house protocols that would come with inviting musicians and everything else backstage,” he says.
Susan Medak, managing director at Berkeley Repertory Theatre
Then: As late as March 4, canceling Berkeley Rep shows still felt unimaginable to many. It was an inbetween moment: Most people weren’t wearing masks yet, but the company was wiping down every surface between shows, covering concessions that had previously sat open and posting bathroom signage about how long to spend washing your hands.
“It’s the Wild West right now,” Medak said at the time. Since then: “When you think about anything that’s happened that’s this traumatic, it in part has been a reflection of our inability to imagine it,” Medak says, a year later. “I think that was probably a good thing. I’m not sure we could have handled this a whole lot better if we’d been able to know. It would have been just agonizing to shut down knowing we were not going to be able to open for another year and a half.” Looking ahead: “I think the agony of not making for a year and a half has wrought havoc with people’s psyches, their sense of identity, their sense of purposefulness and also, of course, their incomes, their livelihoods. But I think it’s bigger than that,” she says. “I’ve talked with very few artists who’ve found that this has been a time of creativity — which has been a lesson for me in thinking about what is an environment that makes it possible for artists to create.”
She’s leery of investing in safety theater — equipment or procedures that provide a
false sense of security without actually promoting public health.
“One of the reasons we will wait a while before we open is that I would so much rather spend money on art than on the pretend safety,” she says.
James Aaron Oh, actor in New Conservatory Theatre Center’s “The Book of Mountains and Seas”
Then: Since New Conservatory Theatre Center performs in a cityowned building, which got earlier prohibitions on gatherings than private facilities in San Francisco did, “The Book of Mountains and Seas” was one of the first Bay Area productions with a local cast to cancel performances. Oh and his fellow cast members got just one preview performance before the show shut down.
“I need some time to myself,” he remembers of his postshow feelings. “I was starting to head home, and I saw the left turn to go off to Treasure Island and just decided to go over there. It was very quiet, a ghost town almost. I found a place to park that was literally right up next to the water and just sat on the rocks for a good couple hours, contemplating the whole situation.”
Since then: For a while, Oh thought the show was just on hold. He kept looking at the script once a week, to keep it fresh. He finally resigned himself to the show’s loss in June or July.
Looking ahead: Oh has been producing short films with a group of other Asian American actors as well as working with Sweet Nothing Productions on “Victoria Place,” which he describes as a gay soap opera.
Though he’s forgotten his lines from “The Book of Mountains and Seas,” he remembers one scene especially vividly: Randall Nakano plays his character’s father, Raymond; his own character, Archie, has died. Raymond has just realized a search for meaning is futile. He’s holding a book, whose conceit is that, whenever it’s open, Archie can be onstage.
“I’m standing down stage left. As he’s center stage mid. I look back to him, and he looks back at me, and he closes the book on me, and I dip offstage.”
Then Oh’s job was to prepare to slide set panels to end Act 1, so he would watch the stage. He remembers “just seeing him with the book, placing it in a trash can lid and with a prop lighter, setting it aflame and watching as the colors of magenta and blue turn into a bright, vibrant red.”