How much more coping?
What do we do now that Christmas is cancelled?
Here’s some of my thoughts!
Despite being away from the UK since the November lockdown, I cannot say that it hasn’t affected me. There’s many friends and colleagues, people that I work with, that have had to cope with the Lockdown 2.0, London going into Tier 3, and now… Tier 4. And their worries, their coping mechanisms, their outlook has influenced what we talk about, our work, our rehearsals (Yes, we are still rehearsing for future performances), which family members I get to see, some being in Ukraine, others in Britain. Thise that I do see, I do COVID tests before I risk visiting them.
Nobody remains unaffected, and after a long year of pretty much putting our lives on hold the Christmas Is Cancelled news is just quite frankly a massive punch in the gut!
So, how do we keep going? There’s no other choice, sure, but HOW?
Here's what I've come up with so far:
1) Adopt a different viewpoint.
You know how it goes: Keep Calm and…
Sure, the pandemic has been keeping us in a constant state of worry for just under a year, and we've got more things to worry about and the self-isolation is much much more than a simple inconvenience not only to our mental health, but also to the financial stability of each of us and the world.
However, a good friend of mine, who has been having one tough stressful thing after another happening to her for more than1.5 years now told me: you need to adapt to this level of stress. There's no other way. You must change your own reaction, the way you see the level of catastrophe, so you can eventually look at it this way "Oh, look, yet another horrible thing happening. Ok, back to my tea".
What I'm trying to say is: we can postpone life no longer. There's no sense in wasting more nerve cells on being surprised at how horrible the situation we're in currently is. Sit down, think to yourself what you can do right now to keep working, keep creating, keep earning money, and just do it.
And no more cancelling celebrations. I'm not saying we should break rules (although I do believe the complete self-isolation is not the answer, and should be examined in the context of morality, ethics, economics and humanitarian considerations).
What I mean is: let's change how we see the limitations. Gotta refrain from visiting anyone, ok, we’ll increase the Zoom call times, and carry on. Can’t celebrate Christmas with family? Just keep them on Zoom all night with you, and party. Do what you can, even if it’s very little. Don’t allow yourself to see it as something to dive into a deep depression over. It will get better. It will for certain, because the one rule about life that is unbreakable is that everything changes, and everything passes, and everything ends.
In the meantime…
This is the nation of “Keep Calm and Carry On”, after all!
At the end of the day, over the course of history, the existence of the human race, our civilization has survived much much worse things, and that means we are definitely built to survive this!
2) Do theatre anyway.
I watched Bob Wilson's and Willem Dafoe's interview last week on Zoom and I remember Robert Wilson being asked a question: “How can theatre cope with the COVID restrictions?”
So he then said very simply: can't create theatre in venues? Perform on the street. Don't have money for a hammer? Use a rock.
Don't postpone life and don't postpone art, guys! Hardships will come and go, worlds will fall apart, but all we have in life is how we choose to spend it. And history always uses art (and artefacts) to judge a time.
So let’s fill the world with our art, with our street performances, with paintings and sculptures, with film, with cross-media art! And as for life… it will go on as always.
And honestly, I think there’s some comfort in that.