On March 8th 2020, the production of Beauty and the Beast that I had been rehearsing since September 3rd of 2019 (long story) played its final performance. It had been a helluva ride but through all the obstacles thrown in our way (and there were several), we put on one of if not the best production I’ve ever been a part of. And I finally got to do the first show I ever saw on Broadway. How many people get to say that or have that kind of full circle moment? After strike, we all said our goodbyes, hugging it out like it would be the last time we would ever see each other…but surely it wasn’t, we were all gonna have a big reunion in the summer. And Black Widow was coming out in a few months, I was gonna see a friend of mine in a show, as far as I was concerned, even though we had a election coming up that had me scared shitless, 2020 was going to be an ok year. Right?
BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
I knew the coronavirus was a thing as early as December but I thought it would just be a thing that passed like swine flu. When my mother advised me not to hug people at our final performance, I scoffed. Granted, I knew things were getting pushed back or cancelled but I just shrugged it off at the time.
“The new James Bond movie got pushed back.”
Ok, plenty of time for me to bone up on the last ones.
“The St. Patrick’s Day Parade got cancelled.”
Oh darn. I should really buy those tickets to that show soon.
“The NBA cancelled their season.”
Well I’m not a sports guy so…
“Broadway shut down.”
……………what?
That, as my therapist put it, was the record scratch moment.
At the time, I optimistically thought, “Oh I can do this for a few months, big whoop!” By now (or at least at the time of this writing), it should be obvious that this has lasted more than a few months. But for the longest time, I was in denial. I would see people on bullcrap sites like the BroadwayWorld.com message boards and the Broadway subreddit swear up and down that the prospect of theaters reopening this year, let alone in a few weeks, was too optimistic, that nothing could actually happen without a vaccine, yada yada yada. At first, I brushed it off as hyperbole. I mean the BroadwayWorld message boards are a cesspit of negativity. It’s like Mordor and the Death Star rolled into one. This was just temporary, right? But then more and more news outlets of a significantly more reliable nature kept saying the same thing. No theater till possibly 2021. When it finally became reality, it was easier to accept. Enough stuff had been pushed back by then, it was just a question of when they were finally going to confirm it. But it still hurt. The theater, as you will find if you stick around and keep reading, is, has been, and will continue to be such a huge part of my life. And I am chomping at the bit for it to come back. I’m basically all those people in Monty Python and the Holy Grail screaming, “GET ON WITH IT!!!!!!” only nowhere near as funny.
The thing about living with Asperger’s is, we Aspies don’t always adapt well to change. So let’s unpack all of this, shall we?
- Four days after my show closes, I basically get told I can’t see my castmates.
- Theaters are closed and can’t reopen even with full blown social distancing. True, it’s the right thing to do but it still sucks.
- The show I was going to see got cancelled.
- I can’t even go see a damn movie.
As the dumpster fire that was last year raged on, that’s when the annoying neighbors that live in all our brains who go by the names of “anxiety” and “depression” came to visit and damn well overstayed their welcomes. I was “taking breaks” from social media but also cutting myself off from people, save for a select few. I was afraid to speak my mind for fear of someone telling me I was full of crap or being too optimistic (because optimism has basically become something to be ridiculed). There were days it would get so overwhelming, I would just break down crying. All because I was scared shitless that this was life from now on, a world with no theater, at least not the way we used to do it. It also didn’t help that try as I might, I would keep looking for hope in all the wrong places. Comment sections, Reddit, Twitter, interviews with Patti LuPone (seriously, I can’t with her sometimes), it was not healthy. 2020, ladies and gentlemen.
And then there was the event that I would’ve been terrified of, pandemic or no pandemic….the goddamn election. Yes, the polls were extremely promising but that lovely anxiety of mine kept telling me such lovely things as “He’s gonna get re-elected” and “We’ve hit rock bottom“ and my favorite, “,Theaters will never reopen.” I honestly went to bed on election night fearing the worst. So as you can imagine, November 7th was a very good day. There is no doubt in my mind that had The Orange One been re-elected, the vaccine rollout would’ve been screwed up even further than it already is which would’ve complicated reopening….everything. Other more important things too but this is a theater blog so let’s stay focused.
So The Orange One is out, Biden is in AND two days later, we find out that the vaccine that’ll get us out of this nightmare is miraculously highly effective! All is well and I should be happy as hell, right? And believe you me, I was ecstatic that week! It was the happiest I’d been in months! What happened, you ask? Well let’s unpack that as well.
I trust Dr. Fauci absolutely when he says we’ll get back to normal but for whatever reason, I hear that “75-85%” number when it comes to the vaccine and herd immunity and my brain goes into worst-case scenario mode. It has a tendency to do that on occasion but when normalcy hinges on such a vast number……hoo boy. Not to mention, no thanks to The Orange One (yeah, I’m never using his name on this thing….ever), it feels like getting certain people to put on masks for a couple of hours when they leave the house has been like pulling teeth. Or at least that’s what my dumb brain keeps trying to fool me into thinking. And it’s seriously gotten to a point where every time a new date for a thing gets announced, my reaction is “From your mouth to God’s ears.”
But on the other hand, as my therapist has pointed out, so many people are sick of this crap, myself included, so they will likely get the vaccine. Lord knows I will.
The thing about anxiety is it creeps up on you like a mosqui…what’s that? Big Mouth Season 4 used the same metaphor? Eh, my frickin’ blog, my frickin’ rules.
Where was I?…oh yeah, anxiety. It just buzzes and flies around inside your head. Sometimes it’s just one little guy , sometimes it’s a swarm of the bastards. And you can either swat ‘em away or you can let ‘em drain you. The latter is definitely the easier option because the former is more work. But it’s not fun, that’s for damn sure. So do me a solid and get to swattin’.
PS: Get the damn vaccine.
The Aspie Actor 