Post Script

There are a lot of people who would like a do-over for 2020 — an opportunity to go back and experience all the things we had planned for the year that were put on hold by the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing quarantine. For those Madison area theatergoers, Overture Center’s Tim Sauers has some very good news: Most of the lost 2020-2021 season will be back next year. And, provided season ticket holders didn’t already ask for refunds or donate their tickets to Overture, they don’t have to do a thing to enjoy it, except wait.

When Milwaukee Opera Theatre was planning their 2020/2021 season, they had an unusual artistic – and practical – goal for the winter slot: Plan something that wouldn’t get canceled. Obviously this has been a precarious time for artistic directors across the country, working to find ways to reach out to audiences in the middle of a pandemic when gathering more than a handful of people in an enclosed space is medically dangerous and often prohibited. So The Distance Commissions were born, along with the newly coined word “Zoirèe:” a portmanteau that MOT made up that means “a soirèe that occurs over Zoom, allowing theater fans to consume a story while remaining safe during a global pandemic.”

Forward Theater Company has a knack for choosing plays that are accidentally a bit on the nose. Last year they planned on producing The Amateurs — the story of a troupe of 14th century actors during the Black Plague — which was canceled due to the outbreak of COVID-19. This season they chose The Niceties by Eleanor Burgess — a play about people so entrenched in their opposing views that they cannot hear each other’s arguments across the enormous ideological crevasse that separates them. That describes this political moment in the U.S. to a tee.

Unfortunately this piece, available for streaming through February 7, barely scratches the surface of the current, essential conversations that need to happen about race in this country. The weak script, uneven performances, and poor production values undercut the exchanges it would like to provoke.

As we all know, this year was strange. Every part of our lives was upended and for those whose work involves live performances, this was an understatement. Collectively, we have lost so much during the COVID-19 pandemic. Along with epic loss of life and livelihoods, we have lost intimate connections with friends and loved ones. We have also lost the experience of being an audience – united in a time and place, attention wrapt, heartbeats literally in synch, inhaling a singular performance and exhaling applause.

That said, there were still many notable performances in 2020, whether live and in person, live-streamed, or recorded. And every single theater company that worked to adapt their art to fit unprecedented conditions — to keep connected with audiences through emails, interviews, podcasts, and glitchy Zoom readings — should be recognized for their relentless stubbornness and extraordinary commitment to the single greatest story-telling medium in history: theater in all its forms.

So here are my personal highlights from the performing arts world in 2020, along with my fervent wish that we will all be gathering together for live performances at this time next year. Part I focuses on the live performances I saw. Part II explores the virtual theater I enjoyed.

As the song from the musical chestnut Auntie Mame goes “We need a little Christmas, right this very minute.” And that’s just what COVID-weary theater audiences have got, as we face end the year in the midst of a pandemic-induced “intermission” that began last March. So in this merry and socially-distanced time of the year between Christmas and New Year’s Day, there’s no harm in bringing a little more holiday cheer into the house via our computer screens.

Celebrated author Neil Gaiman gave a commencement speech in 2012 at the University of the Arts called “Make Good Art.” I have often returned to this brilliant piece of writing and encouragement in times of desperation. Or fear. Or ennui.

This summer I read it a lot. And the section that always rings truest for me is, “Life is sometimes hard. Things go wrong, in life and in love and in business and in friendship and in health and in all the other ways that life can go wrong. And when things get tough, this is what you should do.

Make good art.

American Players Theatre’s holiday performance of This Wonderful Life, created wholly by core company member Nate Burger and longtime APT director William Brown, is a pure (online) delight. It proves once again that a superlative actor can create whole worlds — completely capturing our imaginations with a gesture, a laugh, or a wink — on a bare stage. And even in the worst of these COVID times, actors can conjure stories that practically glow with holiday cheer through our computer screens.

Next Act Theatre’s beautifully realized production of The Christians, by Lucas Hnath, could not have come at a better time. In a moment when the chasm between “us” and “them” in American society has never felt wider, when facts are routinely overthrown by beliefs in discourse, this play examines just how difficult it is for people to take in new information that contradicts their previous, foundational views. It also exposes how important that familiar bedrock of doctrine is to their equilibrium.

Oscar Wilde’s classic farce The Importance of Being Earnest is a staple of school, community and professional stages because it is ridiculously witty and entertaining, a century after it was first penned. The self-consciously clever story is centered around stuffy societal norms just begging to be flouted; absurd, love-struck young people; mistaken identities; outrageous authority figures; and a sharp critique of the “decadent and shallow” idle class. It’s a literary and erudite sitcom that pits vivacious teens and 20-somethings against stodginess personified.