I was the production stage manager for Wicked on the Road. As the virus cases started to increase, nobody really knew what was going to happen. And I don’t think that we really put it together that we were gonna be one of those places. So I think we all were trying to just wrap our heads around what was happening.
What they actually said to us at the time, we did not know and we only thought it was going to be about three weeks that we would be shut down. So that was the case for the first week we were out until we all started to realize, oh, this could be longer.
Working in theater, it’s hard to describe to people that don’t work in theater. But you are literally on top of each other backstage. There’s close to 100 people backstage at any given time and backstage is close quarters. Then obviously the audience is in close quarters.
We’re lucky in the sense that we are one of the three or four big shows that are out there along with Lion King and Hamilton. And so really, we’re booked for several years ahead of time. We have been told that we do have a job. Our union did tell us or they did negotiate with all of the producers of Broadway shows, of touring companies that if they weren’t on the job would be ours.
We were all in Madison, Wisconsin, when we shut down. We then packed up our stuff and we all started to fly or drive to different places. I own a house in Florida which is rented. So I was homeless at that point. Quite a few people were in the same boat.
A lot of people stayed with family. Our company is pretty much spread out throughout the United States right now. The first six weeks I stayed in the Madison area because I like that area. And I was staying in hotels just thinking, when is that going to happen? When it started to look like it wasn’t going to, I ended up making plans and I came out to Fort Collins, Colorado, where my sister and her family live.
So much is lost in so many ways. One, we lost the community that we’re in. It’s not like a nine to five job. There’s something about being in theater where for years and years you struggle to get ahead. You break into the circle of people that make up Broadway, then make up the touring companies and it becomes such a tight circle. Even though it’s hundreds and hundreds of people, you all have something in common and you all have something that you have strived for and you accomplished it.
It sets up a community that becomes part of your daily life and that community connection is broken. Right now, I think probably the hardest thing for people is the loss of seeing each other and being in the same room. Also just financially, how hard it has become and will continue to be.
