25 top theater minds dream the future: What will the post-pandemic stage look like?
"No one knows when the theaters will reopen, when actors will be able to rehearse in safety or when audiences will feel confident that attending a show won’t kill them. It could be months away. It could be more than a year.One thing that’s certain is that theater will return. Man, Aristotle observed in “Poetics,” is an imitative animal. We learn through mimicry, a form of acting, and through enactment, the basis of drama. The stage isn’t simply a leisure time extravagance. It springs directly from that reflective consciousness that distinguishes human nature.
But while no virus can defeat this art form, the theater will have to change to meet the challenges of a transformed world. While we’re mourning the loss of playgoing among the myriad other losses exacted by this pandemic, I’ve asked artists to imagine the future. How might we rethink basic structures (economic, architectural, aesthetic) in this period of forced reprieve? How might fresh vision transform crisis into opportunity?
At the end of “Angels in America,” Harper, flying off to San Francisco for a new beginning, leaves us with this thought: “In this world, there is a kind of painful progress. Longing for what we’ve left behind, and dreaming ahead.” Artists, those virtuosic dreamers, help us navigate our way into the unknown while not letting us lose sight of the trail we’ve left behind. Our stages may be dark for the foreseeable future, but the theater of new possibility is open for contemplation. These written responses to my query have been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Kristy Edmunds, executive and artistic director, Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA
The future of theater is now a daily discussion with colleagues and makers, and for urgent reason. Some center on sharing survival strategies for bridging this period before picking back up where everything was left off. There are frequent reminders that the theater has lasted through the ages and will rise again once the curtain goes up. Others are embracing a more radical re-imagining for how theater can adapt to new frameworks. With the truth of how vulnerable our economic balancing act is has been made vivid, we see the impact across every sector of our interdependent communities.In this excruciating pause, artists and leaders are using the suspension of our overpressurized operating models to address the gaping cracks and inequities along America’s cultural sidewalk. This is the most epic project we have undertaken in our lifetimes — to collaborate on a future that will not be as unevenly distributed as the past has been."—Charles McNulty, May 19, 2020
This post is an excerpt. Read the full article on the Los Angeles Times website.
Read more about Kristy Edmunds.
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