A Guest Blog by Terry Dwyer

What is the state of theater after its COVID hibernation?

We are nearly two years out of the pandemic bubble and that looming question remains.

While there have been negative impacts upon theater, such as the cancellation of shows in early production and the closing of venues, there is much to be positive about as we move forward.

• First, “The show must go on!” Community theater groups and professional companies took to the medium of Zoom and other platforms to present “live” theater. This advent of web-based productions has expanded the accessibility of theater to those who otherwise might not have been inclined to see a show.

• Second, audiences have been treated to ground-breaking new work through web-based productions. Innovative theater companies like Original Theater in the UK have blended the traditional play with the movie elements of green screen and computer graphics to re-shape and elevate the form of web-based theater production.

Theater and the Times

Theater, as always, adapts to the times. Consider the historical track of live theater. After the Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918, American theater bounced back from its hiatus and productions abounded. This was also after the cessation of hostilities in World War I and playwrights focused on social issues.

Live theater is one of the oldest traditions of oral storytelling. It has survived millennia of prior floods, fires, famines, political intrigue, wars, and plagues.

Between world wars avant-garde movements in theater took hold as a way of addressing social and political issues. The theater of the absurd, documentary theater, and realism were the methods used by emerging playwrights. Later, at the conclusion of World War II, these forms of theater continued to thrive and in the United States, off-Broadway productions grew as an alternative to productions considered inappropriate for Broadway.

Important social issues are usually addressed by theater innovations. For example, playwrights in the post-COVID world are experimenting with form by mixing theater with other communications mediums, like video and graphics, while tackling the issues of the day, whether it be politics, race, gender identity, or family dynamics in the new millennium.

The Stage and Social Issues

In the 1920s, Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty emerged from the tumult between World Wars and financial instability, along with Beckett and the Theatre of the Absurd. This was followed by the influential work of Harold Pinter and his comedy of menace in the 1950s and 60s, a variation on the absurd theater, with Pinter in the 1970s then moving toward more political plays focusing on human rights abuses.

Artaud sought to remove aesthetic distance, bringing the audience into direct contact with the dangers of life. By turning theatre into a place where the spectator is exposed rather than protected, Artaud was committing an act of cruelty upon them.

Antonin Artaud

Augusto Boal

Theater never goes out of fashion; it merely finds new ways to entertain and educate.

Augusto Boal

Some plays that were hot potatoes for theaters in the past may now be just the right temperature for contemporary theater. Sniper, a play about a school shooting by Bonnie Culver, had performances canceled because a shooting happened shortly before the intended opening. Performed in 2022 by the Intime Theatre at Princeton University, the opening was clouded by threats of protests by an anti-gun group. The show went on. Told from the point of view of the first school shooter, this play has seen theaters hesitant to tackle this subject matter. Now, it seems, they are beginning to open their doors and their minds to plays that examine current traumas without suggesting easy solutions. To bring this play to your school or community theatre, search here.

Looking to the Future

Our vision for the future of theater is increasingly optimistic. Live theater is one of the oldest traditions of oral storytelling. It has survived millennia of prior floods, fires, famines, political intrigue, wars, and plagues. In the aftermath have come human dramas and comedies that endeavor to explain how it is and why we continue. This is what theater offers, a steady pulse through the backdrop of our lives. That is why the show goes on.

Where theatre will go after the isolation of the pandemic and COVID-19 is anyone’s guess. It requires time and the dreaming of dreams for reality to be transmuted by the imaginations of contemporary artists. Some new plays entering the 2023 marketplace suggest that the nightmares of those sequestered years will find a new public life on the stage. Firehouse Theatre in Richmond, Virginia, has produced Aound of the Guns–a world premiere musical/concert experience written by Jim O’Ferrell with his band The J.O.B. The title of this unique concert production comes from a military saying that if you get lost on the battlefield you should move toward the sound of the guns.

Other plays, however, are more hopeful about our reemergence into community.

Blue Moon Plays will be publishing a new musical, People R Ready – The Musical, which imagines a resurrection and recombining of old relationships in the arena of a college campus where students rekindle old relationships and discover new ones.

Coming to these pages soon! Watch for it!

Order at Blue Moon Plays: People R Ready