2020 in (Mostly Virtual) Theatergoing
John Zdrojeski, Zoë Winters, Jeb Kreager, and Julia McDermott in the July 2020 Zoom production of Heroes of the Fourth Turning.
“I think the saddest document on my laptop right now is a Word doc called ‘Theatergoing 2020,’” I wrote on March 29 of last year. I can’t recall if, at that time, even the gloomiest prognosticators were predicting that we wouldn’t have live arts events back by the end of the year. We had only been sheltering in place for two weeks, after all; it had only been two weeks since Cutting Ball’s production of my Cyrano translation was indefinitely postponed. But I recall that I was confused, and scared, and felt like I was losing my mind for about the first six weeks of quarantine. And then, after my head cleared and I felt better able to navigate the new normal, it became obvious that theaters’ optimistic re-opening timelines were adorably naïve. (Perhaps this is one time when my lifelong pessimism and worst-case-scenario anticipation has served me well: I told my friend Noah in early May 2020 that I expected it to be another year before we were “back to normal” and circulating freely in the outside world. He replied “Wow, you’re the only one of my friends who thinks that, no wonder you’re taking this hard.” From the vantage point of mid-January 2021, with new strains circulating and a fumbled vaccine rollout, it doesn’t look like I was wrong.)
Artists and arts organizations were just as beleaguered and scared and worried as everyone else, and it was touching how quickly they stepped up to try to fill the quarantine-boredom gap and encourage creativity and community. But that brought its own challenges, and I don’t just mean the technical difficulties and content constraints that came with inventing the new art form of Zoom theater. Rather, I went from “I don’t know when’s the next time I will set foot in a theater again” to “There is too much streaming theater and I am overwhelmed.” Instead of being limited to the offerings of theaters in my region, I suddenly had access to acclaimed work from all around the country and the world. There seemed to be a general assumption that we were all stuck at home, recently unemployed, and bored out of our minds, but I still had a full-time work-from-home job, and I wasn’t lying around binge-watching Netflix—I felt scattered and frenzied and unable to concentrate on anything. Also, many great theaters limit their offerings to a brief time window that is optimized for East Coast audiences. As a Californian, it is really inconvenient for me for events to start at 4 or 5 PM — that’s usually when I’m finishing up work, and taking a walk, and getting dinner started.
But—as with everything else in 2020—I learned to make do. I really came to hate the Metropolitan Opera’s video player, which I could not figure out how to fast-forward or rewind when watching on my TV. (Also, don’t get me started on the way the Metropolitan Opera is treating their unionized employees.) I really came to love the free National Theatre Live offerings, because they were available on YouTube for an entire week and I could stream them on my television at my convenience. And theater provided bright spots amidst the general anxiety, confusion, and days-blurring-together of our pandemic year. The chance to see readings of a friend’s play that I had missed in its San Francisco world premiere (Katie May’s Abominable) and a Pulitzer finalist that I saw a reading of when I was a teenager and too young to fully appreciate it (Eisa Davis’ Bulrusher). The astoundingly intimate experience of seeing the original New York cast of Will Arbery’s astoundingly brilliant play Heroes of the Fourth Turning re-create it over Zoom. Getting caught up in the deeply felt, woman-centered storytelling of Small Island and The Deep Blue Sea, and being able to yell at my TV in a way that I could never do in the theater. Texting with Sondheim-loving friends through the technical difficulties and then the gorgeous performances of the Take Me To the World benefit concert, and feeling like my old self again for the first time in quarantine.
And let’s not forget the last few live events I did manage to see before the world turned upside down. The honor of my final pre-COVID show goes to Killing My Lobster Presents Y2K, which is rather fitting. The show happened at PianoFight, which was my theater community’s watering hole for the latter half of the 2010s. And the idea of evaluating the turn-of-the-millennium cultural moment from a two-decades-later perspective was a surprising sub-theme of life in 2020. (For instance, a good handful of the most viral podcast episodes of the year were about re-evaluating late-1990s culture: “The Case of the Missing Hit” by Reply All, “Baz Luhrmann’s Sunscreen Song” by Switched on Pop, and half of what’s on You’re Wrong About.) In some ways, though, the scrappy Y2K sketch show feels like an epilogue to my last BIG theatergoing adventure of 2020: Gatz, by Elevator Repair Service on tour at Berkeley Rep. I’d been wanting to see this piece for nearly a decade—ever since reading this article in The New Yorker in fall 2010—and I’m glad I got to have this last hurrah of marathon theatergoing right before everything shut down. An ironic footnote: as of 2021, The Great Gatsby is in the public domain, so when theater returns, we will probably be flooded with Gatsby adaptations, and it wouldn’t surprise me if ERS retires Gatz as a show whose moment has passed.
2020 was an unusual year, so I can’t structure this list or compute my statistics in the usual way. I used to separate this list into Plays, Musicals, Readings, and Operas; this year is divided between Live Events, Filmed Theater (broadcasts of productions that were staged pre-COVID), Filmed Opera (ditto), and Special COVID Presentations (Zoom theater, podcast plays, and other adaptations to the circumstances of 2020).
It is a cruel irony that after several years of theaters producing ever more female playwrights in line with a goal of “50/50 in 2020,” the actual year 2020 saw the number of female-authored plays on my theatergoing list go way down. And, though I don’t usually tally the number of plays I see by POC vs. white writers, I get the sense that something similar happened there (with similar irony considering the protests that happened this past summer and the accompanying focus on the entrenched racism of the theater industry). But the archival streaming broadcasts focused on classics with wide name recognition, and there just aren’t a lot of female-authored or POC-authored classics. It is a sobering reminder that, when live theater returns, we will have to work extra hard not to allow theaters to only program “safe, familiar” choices—which often skew white and male.
Live Events
Vinegar Tom, by Caryl Churchill, at Shotgun Players
Ways to Leave a Body, by Alexa Derman and Roxie Perkins, at Cutting Ball
How to Transcend a Happy Marriage, by Sarah Ruhl, at Custom Made
Gatz, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, staged by Elevator Repair Service at Berkeley Rep
Y2K, by Killing My Lobster
Filmed Theater
Cyrano de Bergerac, by Edmond Rostand, adapted by Martin Crimp, West End production, 2020
School Girls, or The African Mean Girls Play, by Jocelyn Bioh, Berkeley Rep, 2020
One Man, Two Guvnors, by Richard Bean, National Theatre, 2011
Jane Eyre, adapted by Sally Cookson, National Theatre, 2015
Treasure Island, adapted by Bryony Lavery, National Theatre, 2015
Beardo, music by Dave Malloy, book and lyrics by Jason Craig, Shotgun Players, 2011
Love Never Dies, music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, lyrics by Glenn Slater, book by Lloyd Webber, Ben Elton, Frederick Forsyth, and Slater, Melbourne production, 2011
Twelfth Night, by Shakespeare, National Theatre, 2017
Kill the Debbie Downers! Kill Them! Kill Them! Kill Them Off!, adapted from Chekhov’s Three Sisters (in Paul Schmidt’s translation) with additional text by Mark Jackson, Shotgun Players, 2019
Frankenstein, adapted by Nick Dear, National Theatre, 2011 (note: I watched this in both versions to get the full effect of Jonny Lee Miller’s and Benedict Cumberbatch’s performances)
Beowulf: A Thousand Years of Baggage, music by Dave Malloy, book and lyrics by Jason Craig, Shotgun Players, 2008
Antony and Cleopatra by Shakespeare, National Theatre, 2018
Sea Wall by Simon Stephens, short film directed by Stephens and Andrew Porter, 2011
A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, Young Vic, 2014
Coriolanus by Shakespeare, Donmar Warehouse, 2014
The Madness of George III by Alan Bennett, Nottingham Playhouse, 2018
Small Island, adapted by Helen Edmundson, National Theatre, 2019
Arcadia, by Tom Stoppard, Shotgun Players, 2018
A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Shakespeare, Bridge Theatre, 2019
Act One, adapted by James Lapine, Lincoln Center Theatre, 2014
Les Blancs, by Lorraine Hansberry, National Theatre, 2016
The Deep Blue Sea, by Terence Rattigan, National Theatre, 2016
Amadeus, by Peter Shaffer, National Theatre, 2016
Being Shakespeare, by Jonathan Bate, Trafalgar Studios, 2011
Filmed Opera
Agrippina by Handel, Met Opera, 2020
La Traviata by Verdi, Met Opera, 2018
La fille du régiment by Donizetti, Met Opera, 2008
Il barbiere di Siviglia by Rossini, Met Opera, 2007
Le comte Ory by Rossini, Met Opera, 2011
Der Rosenkavalier by Strauss, Met Opera, 2017
Les Contes d’Hoffmann by Offenbach, Met Opera, 2009
The Merry Widow by Lehar, Met Opera, 2015
Manon, by Massenet, SF Opera, 2017
Susannah, by Floyd, SF Opera, 2014
La Cenerentola, by Rossini, SF Opera, 2014
Vec Makropoulos, by Janacek, SF Opera, 2010
Lucia di Lammermoor, by Donizetti, SF Opera, 2008
Special COVID Presentations
At-Home Gala, streamed concert by the Metropolitan Opera
Take Me To the World: A Sondheim 90th Birthday Celebration, streamed concert
Celebrating the Summer Season, streamed concert by San Francisco Opera
Abominable, by Katie May, live staged reading over Zoom, presented by PlayGround SF
Richard II, by Shakespeare, Public Theatre/WNYC radio play
Heroes of the Fourth Turning, by Will Arbery, Playwrights Horizons 2019 cast performing on Zoom
Quicksand Club’s 3rd Virtual Show, sketch comedy by various writers (including me), streamed on YouTube
Howards End, adapted by Caroline Hewitt, excerpts performed over Zoom by Portland Center Stage cast
In Love and Warcraft, by Madhuri Shekar, Zoom production by ACT and Perseverance Theater
Bulrusher, by Eisa Davis, Zoom reading by Bard at the Gate
The Logic, by Will Arbery, Zoom reading by San Francisco Playhouse
House of Desires by Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz, translated by Catherine Boyle, Zoom reading by Hedgepig Ensemble and American Players Theater
Origin Story, by Dan Le Franc, Zoom reading by Bard at the Gate
Monday Night PlayGround: Suffrage, by various writers, Zoom production
Utopia, by Charles Mee, virtual production by Cutting Ball
Monday Night PlayGround: Hero’s Journey, by various writers, Zoom production
Celebrating the Voices of San Francisco Opera, streamed concert by San Francisco Opera
Monday Night PlayGround: Illuminate, by various writers, Zoom production
Previous year-end theatergoing reports: 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010