“Curiouser and curiouser.” We find ourselves in a semester unlike any I’ve ever seen. Many of us spent the summer isolated, worried, and unsure about what the world was going to do, and what the academic year would look like. In truth, the way forward continues to linger in murk. We’re in the rabbit hole and we’re not sure exactly where the exit ramp is going let us out.
A bit dark, I know, but stick with me here.
Because for all of the uncertainty, there are things we do know to be true:
We know, for example, that we are strong together. Theater is a collaborative form by necessity, but also as a consequence of the people it attracts. I don’t know about y’all, but it wasn’t the scripts, the muslin, the spirit gum, or the prompt books that first drew me to theater. It was the people that got me hooked. Theater is a people with customs (ghost lights and an aversion to whistling in the theater). It’s a people with lingo (raise your stage left hand if you feel me). A people with moxie. Even drenched in scenic paint at 3am, we know the fans will have it all dry by run-thru. Theater is a people that gathers and compounds. Greets challenge with an audacious grin.
We know that we have been here before. Plagues, wars, and disasters can’t douse creativity. (I know this because I took a Theater History class.) To be sure, here in the latter half of 2020, we are all in a tough spot. But there is light, or as we say, there is Pre-Show at the end of the tunnel. And until we get there, we are going to do what we have always done when the lights dim. We are going to create, share, concoct, formulate, repurpose, join forces. Discover. We are going to make sure that when we land, the paint is dry and the house is open.
After all, we’re used to taking crazy ideas— impossible ideas— and four weeks later, shining every light in the building on what we’ve created from the seemingly irresolvable. This fall we don’t have a building, but we’re not about to let that get in the way.
So welcome to Fall 2020, an age of strange new approaches to teaching theater, to making it, and to falling down-the-rabbit-hole-in-love with it all over again.
Marcus McQuirter
Drama Department Chair
