BWW Blog: “There's Always Another Show” - A Message of Hope for Theatre Students in a Pandemic

I'll be honest with you, even though being a college student is hard for everyone at this time, I think it's especially hard for theater majors. We thrive on human connection and support, and that's exactly what we haven't gotten this semester. For most of us it feels like the thing we love most in the world is being held above our heads, dangling out of reach for who knows how long. However, this article isn't intended to be about mourning as it is about hope, so bear with me.

The professors in my department have done their very best to still give us a theater experience. I go to school at Brigham Young University in Utah, and I'm lucky enough to still get to have a few in-person theater classes. My Intermediate Acting class has ten students in it, but we split the class in half so that five of the students will be there in person while the other five are watching us perform the scenes through zoom, and we switch off every other day. Social distancing happens even in the scenes and masks are always worn.

None of our classes are the way they would usually be, and it has made everything more difficult. I know it's been this way for every theater major in every college around the world. In a discussion with one of my professors, she told me that she's sorry they can't give us the experience they wish they could; but it's okay to me feel sad and to mourn that. Even though I'm not learning the skills I had hoped for, I'm still gaining skills. What those skills are, exactly, I'm not quite sure, but I certainly know that I'm learning something!

In this conversation with my professor, I expressed sorrow that I might never get to do an in-person show again while at BYU. To which my professor said, "Maybe you won't do one here. But the thing is, for people in our field, there's always another show."

I am a theater education major, so I plan on getting to teach in a high school someday. I know that I'll likely get to do a show a semester, every semester, for as long as I'm teaching. That gave me hope. Maybe you're an acting major, a design student, a dancer. Whatever you do, you are a creative individual, and creativity is born out of constraint. There will always be another show for you- for all of us- as long as we are motivated and innovative enough to make it happen.

In my acting class, we spent a month working on extended realism scenes and then performed them for each other. Instead of performing them in class as we usually do, our teacher booked the now hardly-used small theater so that we could perform our scenes in the evening and make it just a little more special. We all had seen each other perform these scenes half a dozen times already, but something was different now. We were all in costume, all warming up together, and I started to feel the pre-show jitters that I haven't felt in ten months. And then when the lights went down in that little theater, it was as if something magical was beginning. I couldn't remember the last time I'd felt that indescribable joy- you all know how that feels. I practically skipped the whole way home that night; it was like walking on air. That night, I learned that the joy of theater is not gone forever! It will be back, and in the meantime, we will find ways to still be creative. We hadn't created anything particularly big or special, but it was a show of our own making, even one with restrictions. It can be done!

Right now, I'm hanging on to the magic word "yet." There aren't any shows happening...yet. I haven't gained the important skills I want to...yet. That magic "yet" is full of potential. The future may be one of uncertainty, but it is also one of possibility. And for theater people like us, who are always feeling that itch to create, we can find some peace knowing that there will always be another show.

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