The Show Must Go On

As I may have mentioned before, I participate in community theater. I mostly participate as an actor but sometimes as a playwright, or, if someone is extremely desperate, a director. With the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic, theater, all theater, is shut down for the near and unpredictable future. I was not in any planned shows when the shutdown hit, but I have a number of friends who were in rehearsal for a show that came to a full stop. I know that it was devastating for many of them because acting (and every art form) takes emotional investment in the project if the project is going to be successful. It is a lot more than just memorizing words. You have to inhabit the character. So, when a show gets stopped, it is gut-wrenching.

This is why we have so often heard the phrase “the show must go on.” Actors, directors, and stage managers, constantly live with the precariousness of live theater. To put it bluntly: things go wrong. I have been in a lot of productions in the last 25 years and I don’t think I have ever been in a show where everything went flawlessly every night. Lines get missed. Light cues, or sound cues get missed. Actors get sick. Actors get injured. Crises happen in their lives. But actors are a dedicated lot. If there is any way possible for an actor to carry on with the show she/he will do it.

I have a friend who was in a production of You Can’t take it With You. One night an actress coming on stage stepped on a step which collapsed. She broke her leg. Other actors helped her to the couch where she was supposed to be for the rest of the scene. They surreptitiously asked her if they should stop the show. She said no. The play continued on. This was the only scene she was in, so at intermission an ambulance took her off to the hospital, and the audience was none the wiser. Don’t ever tell me community theater is for wimps.

Sometimes a crisis arises where an actor can’t go on. Then the stage manager and/or the director have to get creative on the fly. If they have enough lead time, they can call up another actor. I have also seen the director or the stage manager fill in for the missing actor. I saw a show once where the lead actress had died one week before opening. Another actress was called in and had one week to learn blocking and as many lines as she could for a part that had been in rehearsal for a couple of months. She did an astounding job. There was a moment when I realized that she had been reading from a script, but I had no idea how long she had been reading from a script because she had worked it in so naturally to her character’s movements and mannerisms that you just did not notice it.

Of course, actors have to be ready to fix something that goes wrong in the middle of a show. Someone will forget a line. Someone will forget a prop. Actors need to learn not only their own lines but the other actor’s lines as well, so if something gets off track, they can quickly size up what needs to be said to cover the flaw without making a break in the logic of the scene. I had two friends who were in a two-man show together. Somewhere along the way one night, a line got blown and one actor said the other one’s line. So, the other actor said the next line of the other character. They went along like that saying each other’s lines for a page and a half of dialogue until they could figure out how to switch it back on track. Somehow, they made it work.

On opening night of the very first show I was ever in (it was Harvey. I was playing Mr. Wilson, the security guard at the sanitarium) all the other actors left me alone on the stage, and the doctor was supposed to come bursting through the door . . . but the doctor didn’t come bursting through the door, and there I was, alone on stage with the audience looking at me, waiting for me to do something. I heard running backstage, and I thought, ‘oh good, he’s coming.’ Then I realized the running was going in the wrong direction. It was in fact, the stage hand running off stage to see where the doctor was. Had I been a more seasoned actor (had it not been opening night of the very first show I was ever in) I might have been able to come up with some clever adlibs to pass the time. As it was, after waiting what seemed to be about five years, but which was probably about 20 seconds, I pretended like I heard something at the door. I went to the door, opened it and said ‘doctor is that you? Here let me help you . . .” and I went out. I wasn’t going to stay on that stage by myself! After another two years (15 seconds?) the actor made his way to me and we burst through the door together and the play went on.

So, actors, directors, stage managers are used to being flexible. They are used to making things work when something goes wrong. Theater companies (both professional and amateur) are always under budgetary constraints. Not very many theater companies are flush with money even in the best of times. Will the pandemic kill theater as we know it? There may be some theater companies that will not make it, and those that do may have to make some modifications. But Theater itself will survive. That’s what it does. They take a bad situation and somehow make it work out. As they said in Shakespeare in Love:
“How can it possibly work out?”

“Nobody knows. It’s a mystery.”

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(My novel Star Liner, is now available in paperback or as an e-book through Amazon and other online sources).

Link to Star Liner