Sitting through the Designer Run of Kitchen Dog Theater's new play, Dream Hou$e, was...
was weird was what it was.
The premise is that two sisters who recently lost their mother and inherited the long-time family home agree to let a reality TV show rennovate it for sale.
The IRL is that two designers who recently lost their mothers and have/had to deal with the family home watched and tried to seem all professional an' stuff. (Basically, not weep all over the rest of the design team.)
Sometimes theater hits too close to the bone.
I have a visceral memory of watching another play called The Marriage of Betty & Boo, decades ago when I was very pregnant. I have no remembrance of what happened in that play - except that every couple minutes (it seemed like) Betty would have another miscarraige and the actors would bounce a rubber baby doll off the stage. That I remember.
(The other couple, who had picked the play, apologized to the pregnant lady all the way home.)
And I know of at least one person who saw I play I designed, Natural Shocks, who told me later that it had shown her that she needed to get out of bad relationship.
It's not just safely sitting in a plush theater seat where this happens either...
On a trip to Europe once, when I happened to be in the Netherlands, in Amsterdam, actually, on a free day with nothing planned... I got a call from a theater asking whether I was interested in designing The Diary of Anne Frank?
What are the odds of that?
Of course I said yes. And, suddenly, the day had a plan: visit Anne Frank's house, or rather, the warehouse where her family hid during WWII. Which I had intended not to see. Because wimp.
So I toured the Frank's hiding place and felt all the things I had intended not to feel... But, because I was viewing this site professionally, I had just that little bit of distance that allowed me to be touched but not... well, blubber in public.
The other night, watching that Designer Run? I wrapped myself in professionalism. I took notes and, when the actresses cut too close to the bone, I sketched a random sketch.
For this clever and darkly funny musical - written by members of the Company - the set design is a blend of the original 2018 production by David Walsh and new bits by myself... like this crazy Wheel of Misfortune.
A linocut print of the city of Ptolith, in Aenoriia - art by Clare Floyd DeVries,
world by AstrophagyMC
I have been really busy though this Fall; traveling, a little theater, and writing on a long-form fiction project related to those imaginary Minecraft cities I've been helping build for so long.
Now I'm illustrating that and discovering the fun of linocut printing! I'm currently pretty inky myself and my house is even more filled with little teeny tiny slivers of linoleum... everywhere. They stick to bathtubs BTW.
(Now I bury you in examples to make up for so few posts. Brace yourself!)
I love that these crazy prints combine my architecture, Minecraft, D&D, writing, and art.
Theater? Less busy, because of traveling. But my set for the Phantom of the Opera is onstage at Pocket Sandwich Theatre in Carrollton right now. A fun melodrama! Go see it and throw some popcorn.
The Phantom of the Opera melodrama, Pocket Sandwich Theatre
First off, I got to see Kitchen Dog Theater's production of The Grown-Ups last night at Samuel Grand Park. Really liked it! Very topical. Read more about it HERE.
Second, I've been off traveling to California and back, but now that I AM back, theater is going full steam ahead: I'm reprising last year's Sherlock set for Stage West's The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes and the Fallen Souffle and designing a set at Pocket Sandwich Theatre for the farce, Tom, Dick, and Harry.
Here are a few pics of Sherlock last year - this year will see only modest changes, mostly to furnishings or set dressing... plus adding a chandelier that I need to find!
I do know I've been pretty busy. I've been meeting monthly with my set design students at Stage West (earlier post on our design charrette HERE). They give their end-of-program design presentations this Sunday! Three very motivated and hard-working college students... with schedule's even more crazy than mine.
I've also been designing several shows. First - and still running - the cartoon-hero comedy Captain Phantasm versus the Nefarious Doctor Noir at Pocket Sandwich Theatre. Lots of fun and flying popcorn!
Here is its basic set - an all-purpose vintage urban setting with an overlook of the city's dam and its nefariously threatened water supply! The next sketches show the Scientist's Lab and the Villain's Lair AKA the Pink Pussycat Club. (The pussycat sign lights up and blinks.)
But wait! - another show opens tonight! Echo Theatre's production of Lauren Gunderson's Natural Shocks.
This one-woman play is set in the character's basement and its sketches I made at the speed of the tornado she's hiding from...
I kind of like the immediacy of these sketches:
Echo Theatre production ofNatural Shocks - sketch by Clare Floyd DeVries
The scheduling is interesting for this - first this play and then their next, I and You, also by Gunderson, follow each other with only a week between them. So parts of the set are shared, basically the upstage wall with its door. (I'll explain that set in another blog post.)
So tonight Echo's first show opens and tomorrow their second one gets into gear to replace it in a week. Yikes.
Also shifting into gear is the play The Last Truck Stop by Crystal Jackson at Kitchen Dog Theater, opening June 8th.
Here's a series of videos I've found while researching info for my set design apprentices on the topic of : "Plans! How and Why... and What Are They!" (I joke, but seriously, floor plans are so fundamental to understanding, designing, and documenting a set design... why is there so little explanation available?)
Here's a wonderful explanation of a clever and charming set by designer Wendy Todd. It has nothing to do with plan drawing, but is just wonderfulness:
Here's one of my favorite architectural explainers, Stewart Hicks, talking about plans:
And here's a face new to me (30 x 40 Design Workshop) with a good discussion of the architectural design process - notice how his drawings morph from rough and schematic, to precise and more real-world. Note the use of my favorite Tracing Paper!
Today's the big day for my Stage West theater set design students - a full day design charrette for a made-up-by-me show:
Pretty sure this is out of copyright as it was published in 1918
Three Little Pigs –
the Musical (the Outline)
Not a kid
version. (Less Disney, more Brothers
Grimm, with cheeky references to Into the
Woods, The Wizard of Oz, and This Old House.) The danger and violence feel real and the
ending – cooking and eating the Wolf – is triumph, retribution and tragedy.
Imagine
being a Pig... This is home-invasion!A monster
beseiges a disjointed family that has to come together as true brothers to save
themselves.Imagine being a Wolf... with
Wife and hungry Pups to feed at home.
Set
in the timeless ever-present of fairytales or hunger and homelessness.
Scene 1 –
The Woods
The
Wolf’s place. Dark. Dangerous.
Hungry.
(Throughout
the play the Wolf narrates –cynical, amusing, ruthless.Sometimes he is joined by a chorus of Woodland Creatures, an ensemble of cute(ish)
dancing / acrobatic critters: Deer, Raccoon, Rabbit, Squirrel, Owl, and that
obnoxious Happiness Bluebird.They’re all
terrified of the Wolf - except for Owl, because it takes a predator to
understand a predator.While Squirrel
and Rabbit don’t trust Owl.TheWoodlanders also sing as Wolf’s Wife and his litter of Pups.)
Scene 2 – A
Road Through the Woods
An
inhospitable No-Pigs’-Land. The Pigs
have been kicked out of their nest, er, sty by their Mother Pig, who can’t
stand the brothers’ arguing, jealousy, and laziness a moment longer. Also there’s no food. So she kicked them out into a hostile and
hungry world.
Scene 3 –
Traveling (Dance tribute to Oz ending with throwing
apples.)
Scene 4 – A
Clearing at the Edge of the Woods. There are apple trees, remnants of an old
orchard, and a feral vegetable garden that still yields a few carrots and
potatoes and such. The tumbled ruins of
the old farmstead are almost back to woodland, but there are bricks and sticks
and, if the meadow grass is cut with that rusty sythe, there could be straw.
Scene 5 –
Same Clearing, building is started.
(Big dance number, a flavor of Seven
Brides for Seven Brothers.)
Scene 6 –
Same Clearing, the House of Straw is complete, then blown away.
(The
hit single “Huff n’ Puff” in its first iteration, repeated for each house.)
Scene 7 –
Same Clearing, the House of Sticks is complete, then blown away
Scene 8 –
Same Clearing, The House of Bricks is complete and smoke comes from
its brick chimney. First Wolf attack.
Scene 9 –
Same Clearing, Full Moon. (Wolf’s and Mrs. Wolf’s big duet.)
Scene 10 –
House of Bricks Exterior/Interior, roaring fire and boiling soup pot. Second Wolf attack.
Scene 11 – Same
Interior,
Dinner! (Stupendous dance number)
(It’s
macabre, but the Wolf, who narrated throughout the story, narrates again now –
his talking head on a plate on the feasting table.He sings that, without him,Wolf’s Wife will have to send the Pups out
into the world... hungry.The play ends
when a Pig puts an apple in Wolf’s mouth to shut him up.)
That's the synopsis. The students will try to come up with designs that solve the problems it presents in a black box theater. (Notice the big one yet? That transition from Woods to Clearing?) (Well, and also the built-in problem of building and blowing-away piggie houses on stage in the audience's full view.)
So, the idea of a charrette is to sit down and thrash out an initial design. I've read definitions online that define it as including input from others (not just the designer) and, in my experience, this can be true. (Architect Charles Moore, a noted and unusually collaborative collaborator once responded to citizen phone calls!) But to me, the all-at-a-single-sitting is the defining aspect. It's a way to force-march through the design process. And the time pressure and presence of others also struggling with the problem that adds oomph! to your thinking.
The students are about a 1/2 hour into it - just starting to grasp the difficulties. We'll see what they've got in 5 1/2 more hours. (5 1/2 hours minus pizza time.)
A little extra tidbit: I discovered that the name "charrette" comes from the French name for the cart that rolled around the Ecole de Beaux Arts, collecting student architects' work. The work would be taken away to be judged... just like the tumbril taking prisoners to the guillotine, or so my old French professor explained.
Well, This happened! A nice article about Stage West's apprenticeship program in the Fort Worth Report. The original article is HERE and I've copied the gist of it to this blog (in case of future internet glitchiness) with my own not-so-spiffy photos.
Stage West Theatre’s apprenticeship program sets stage for next generation
by Marcheta Fornoff, Fort Worth Report January 9, 2023
Clare Floyd DeVries has designed real-life fire stations, doctor’s offices and a string of small-town convenience stores, but for the better part of 20 years she’s crafted full environments from scratch in her role as one of the metroplex’s go-to set designers.
Now the architect-turned-set-designer is helping build the next generation of theater professionals as a mentor for Stage West Theatre’s apprenticeship program.
The idea for the program grew out of the COVID-19 shutdown and a desire to “double down” on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts following the wave of Black Lives Matter protests, said Dana Schultes, the theater’s executive producer.
“We made a commitment to ourselves and to the larger theater community that we would work harder to raise our standards so that more and more people from diverse communities were participating in the creation of shows,” she said.
In order to deliver on that promise, they started a paid apprenticeship program to help unclog the talent pipeline.
The program has separate tracks for separate disciplines. This year, there are three sets of three students matched with a mentor in either sound, costume or scenic design.
Mentors are tasked with helping students understand the full scope of what they do for a show, from pre-production meetings through completion and all of the various steps in between.
“One of the things that I noticed about my own educational experience is that when I matriculated, I was not sure what to do next, and it was really intimidating,” Schultes said. “The ultimate goal is for these young students to not only learn from the best, but then to have opportunities to then do their own shows with the mentors watching after them, to say, ‘I'm here for you if you have any questions.’”
Aaron Knowles Dias, education director for the theater, took the reins for the program this year. Finding mentors who are at the top of their field and great teachers was a priority for Knowles Dias, and she said Floyd DeVries is the perfect example of someone who embodies both qualities.
“She's really a master of bringing other people into that artistic process so that they can access it themselves,” she said. “The artistic process, even for artists themselves, is very mysterious … But she's got that awareness of the process and has a really great vocabulary for sharing it with others. And it's just wonderful.”
Clare Floyd DeVries (right) speaks with apprentices Sierra Lesniak (left), Brooks Davenport (center) and Katie Cooley (right) on the set of the recent production “Handle with Care.” (Marcheta Fornoff | Fort Worth Report)
Katie Cooley, who is studying theater design and technology at the University of Texas at Arlington, arrived at the theater early and had the chance to go over tips for perspective drawing before the first session officially began.
Over the course of the morning and after the other students arrived, Floyd DeVries shared several valuable lessons about what goes into creating a believable set: from problem solving practical needs — like creating pieces that can easily be manipulated or moved — to the more theoretical but equally important questions about using design to match the tone of a play.
For example, several plays might be set in a similar time or place, but the design will vary drastically depending on the intended occupants.
“Whose [Victorian] study is it? Is it Sherlock Holmes? Is it Dr. Jekyll? The White Rabbit (from “Alice in Wonderland”)? Professor Higgins from “My Fair Lady”? Those rooms are all rather different because they have such different personalities,” she explained. “So you have to become a bit of a psychologist.”
Sierra Lesniak, a student at Tarrant County College, plans to be a director someday, but is still deciding whether she wants to work in film or in stage plays. In either medium, she said it will be helpful for her to have a background in scenic design and learn strategies for communicating her visions to others.
“Working on a show, you break it down from what's necessary … And then once you have your foundation, you build into the artistic side,” she said. “So getting to learn the technicalities from the perspective of a scenic designer … to have that under my belt as a director … I'm very excited because the more that I can understand everybody's positions as a director, I think would build me up to be better at my job.”
Fellow apprentice Brooks Davenport is a theater design and technology major student at Texas Christian University. He is excited about the opportunity to plug into the local theater scene and get experience outside of school.
“I feel like this is a space where I think I can have a lot of creative freedom,” he said. “I don't know how to explain it, but I feel like there's a difference in being at school and in a classroom and being in a professional environment. I feel like I will be able to explore and experiment a lot designing here.”
Each of the different disciplines for the apprenticeship program run on their own schedule, but all three tracks will come together in May for a celebration, where the students will each have the opportunity to share what they learned. The program enables growth for both the theater and the students, Knowles Dias, the education coordinator, said.
“We are investing in these artists-in-development now so that they will invest in us tomorrow,” she said. “The way we see it, by bringing them into the Stage West fold and supporting them and nourishing them here, giving them great training and sending them off into the world to find their way and grow in experience, skill and success, we are empowering them to be the torch bearers for local theater down the road.”
Marcheta Fornoff covers the arts for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at marcheta.fornoff@fortworthreport.org or on twitter twitter.com/MarchetaFornoff"
At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters.
This article first appeared on Fort Worth Report and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
I seldom get really good show photos (largely because I am a terrible photographer).
But here are some lovely images taken by Sally Jinks of my recent show - written by Brad McEntire and produced at Tarrant College SE - Que sera, Giant Monster.
Que Sera, Giant Monster - Tarrant College SE - photos by Sally Jinks
Sorry... it's been a crazy Spring. But the big message here (the reason I'm finally posting) is:
Go See The Shows!
I have two shows onstage at this moment: Into the Breeches! at Stage West in Fort Worth and Hi5 at Kitchen Dog Theater in Dallas. If you're within driving range of either or both, they're worth seeing.
Into the Breeches! is a charming play about a play. Set in 1942, a theatrical group decides to go ahead and stage Shakespeare's "Henry" plays, even though the men are all off to WWII. Very funny.
Hi5 is a collection of brand new short plays: wild, weird, moving, funny, thought-provoking.
More posts soon, now that I've cleared my board of three plays and a fun mentoring gig.
I have a new show to design, this time for Echo Theatre, In A Word by Lauren Yee, opening March 18th. So... I need to hurry up, huh? My first discussion with the director is this evening. Meanwhile, I've been reading and rereading, and noting. There might be a few little scribbles happening...
And I'm starting that student mentorship. First meeting - due to covid - was virtual, but it's face-to-face tomorrow morning at what will feel like dawn. (Extra coffee please!) A rush hour drive to Fort Worth? It seems against the theater ethos doesn't it.
One of the first things we'll do is discuss the script for Stage West's upcoming play, Witch. Here's a coolo play poster for the 1621 Restoration play upon which it is based.
Well... when it loads it will be....
Made in 1621? Gotta be public domain by now and, anyway, fair/education use
Dance cards were a thing a lady used to have at a ball - a charming little booklet with an attached dainty gilded pencil to mark down promised dances and her gentlemanly partners.
I've always kept a scribbly, scabby version of a dance card myself, to remember what shows I've promised to design, for which theater group.
Well, I did until covid.
Today (while updating my theater how-to book Alice Through the Proscenium, watch for this new expanded! edition's publication date) I happened to need to refer back in time, to see what shows I was juggling in 2019-2020. After I remembered that I had a little black book, found it, and blew off the dust, I saw... well, the perfect illustration of just exactly what covid did to the schedules of every theater artist.
Here's my dance card for 2018 and 2019:
Thirteen shows I designed in 2019, for eight different theaters. In 2020 it was eleven shows, seven theaters, and an Off-Broadway showcase.
Here it is for 2020 and 2021:
Two real shows I designed that actually appeared on stage, one speculative hypnotism show that did not, a cancelation and... blankitude...
That's what covid was like for me and for most of us for those two years.
The first meeting of Stage West's theater design apprenticeship isn't until Thursday, but I spent this morning setting up a Discord server to act as our classroom / treehouse. Our first meeting will - thanks covid! - be virtual, so we'll get to use this treehouse immediately. My fingers are crossed that this will be an easier, friendlier virtual venue than, say, Zoom. (Don't we all hate Zoom meetings by now?)
The photo above is from a Dallas Museum of Art show that I said I'd report back on... Too late now! But I will just say that museums are one of the few outings right now that are, generally, less crowded and feel safer - go mid-week or early in the day if you can. (Don't we all need to get out the house?)
BTW the architectural art exhibit "For a Dreamer of Houses" was fascinating. You can get a good idea of it HERE virtually. The neon house Rubber Pencil Devil by Alex da Corte was cool, but my favorite environment was Francisco Moreno's Chapel. A wonderful, intricate, evocative neo-Romanesque barrel-vaulted chapel - of plywood - completely covered with graphics... as if a 12th century monastery chapel got anachronistic tattoos. Some of them inked by Titian...
DMA show "For Dreamers of Houses" - photos by Clare Floyd DeVries
Anyway, get out however you safely can and see stuff and learn stuff!
Tuesday, January 4, 2022
Happy New Year!
New year, new projects.
Today I'm happily sitting down to try to figure out the shape of this set design mentorship I'm starting at Stage West. (First meeting date has just been set, an hour ago, for January 20th. It's real! To quote Almost Famous "It's happening!")
At the moment this all-important program outline is just a bare list of important dates and critical things-to-achieve... The students - my students! - will observe two other shows in the making and be really involved with the play I'm designing, Into the Breeches! The concrete result of this program(besides invaluable scenic knowledge, of course) should be developing their set design portfolios.
I guess we'll be meeting, in person or virtually, once a week or so, to do....
Here in a fire-weather parched landscape came a few minutes of rain... creating the rich smell of hot dust meeting raindrops as it turns into damp earth. There wasn't enough time to rush out to dance in it. but I stuck my head and arms out the window and laughed.
Later that day... my first invitation to design a stage show in what will be two years.
That fertile and heady smell of first rain on dry earth has a name: petrichor.
I happened across an old web page of mine, a How-To on set building aimed at beginning theater designers and builders: "Theater Set Questions Answered!". You can check it out HERE on Hub Pages.
I'm starting to read a new (to me) book, Stage Designers in Early Twentieth-Century America, by Christin Essin. More a history and cultural study than a visual essay, it's very interesting so far...
Other intriguing reading and watching lately: comedian Colin Jost's memoir A Very Punchable Face; David Sedaris's memoir Theft by Finding; essays/demonstrations/rants/performance art? YouTube videos by Karolina Z'ebrowska (for a funny version of a film costume design production meeting watch "Boobs"); and the vid essays of Jacob Geller. I particularly recommend (to scenic design fans) "The Intimacy of Everday Objects," "Control, Anatomy, and the Legecy of the Haunted House," and also "Art Theft." But, honestly, they're all great.
If you're missing production meetings, here below is a tiny taste. (Honestly, I've always been a bit shocked by the blunt talk by costume designers... this is actually kinda... mild.)
Addendum: How to document a dream - the resin diaramas of Thalasso hobbyer HERE.
For me that means a year and 2 days ago I returned from a trip to California, getting my elderly mother back home just before the country closed down. She had been visiting Texas, had accidentally broken an arm just before flying home, and went through the whole painful process of recovering - well, the first stage of hospitals and rehab - all juuuuust before covid. Thank god. We didn't know it, but it would be months before she could have repair surgery and recovered from that. A painful year - with isolation and worry as frosting.
For me it means a year and 5 days since I was in a theater. Watching an excellent production of Proof at Murphys Creek Theater in Murphys, California. (I once designed that show and really liked this production's set!) A year and eighteen days since I watched the last show I designed: Alabaster at Kitchen Dog Theater, Dallas. I missed its strike while in California, but that show, my last show, closed a year and two days ago.
Haven't stepped on stage since.
Proof - at Plano Repertory Theatre - sketch & design by Clare Floyd DeVries
So what's different in daily life since a year ago?
While drinking coffee in my car (because coffee shops are not a thing for me nowadays) I jotted down the top few examples:
1) Masks. After more than half a million dead in this country, our governor has canceled the state's mask requirement. (Texas ranks 5th most in the country in new infections.) Yet today I wore a mask in the coffee hut's drive-though line - as did the coffee hut staff - and then drank it in my car. I was drinking coffee because someone in my family forgot to take masks this morning for work so I met them part way with masks. Coffee as good-deed-award! Then, driving home, I saw two friends walking together in a park, both wearing masks. Take that, Governor Abbott! Or, as my favorite comment from the mayor of Austin put it:
“From the people who brought you no water and no electricity: no masks.”
Among sensible Texans masks are still a thing.
2) Distancing. My household is still cautious, Mr. Governor, sir. Even though, due to our zip code, we have recently had the first of two vaccine shots. But we are going out more than a year ago. This week we ate out twice: once at an early, uncrowded hour on the patio of a favorite restaurant and again one evening at a picnic table outside a fish place. The pizza was great and the sun that day lovely; the oyster po'boy was also good, but darkness fell and a cool breeze sprang up so that meal was hastier. Still nice to eat food I didn't personally cook. I'm so tired of my own cooking. Hot French fries! Ambrosia!
Since my first vaccine shot I made a couple not-absolutely-necessary excursions. Well, one. A bookstore. It wasn't crowded and I wore a mask and didn't touch much, but I didn't feel I had to grab-n'-go either which was wonderful. Other than that it's just the grocery store once a week. Two weeks after I get my second shot I'm planning to first, get a haircut! (it's been since, um, September?) and, second, try on blue jeans. (I've been living in one pair for a year, wearing PJs or my formal black jeans while THE jeans go round and round in the washing machine and dryer.)
Sadly, I figured out early on that the most patriotic, helpful thing I personally could do for my fellow citizens in this pandemic was to just stay out of the forking way. I keep virus from spreading and keep stores uncrowded by staying home. Sigh.
3) Stores. Stores have changed from a year ago. Our grocery shelves are mostly full again... kinda. There's toilet paper! But fewer brands. That's true of every shelf - fewer brands and some empty spots where a particular item has run out and not yet been restocked. Or won't be. Plenty of hand sanitizer and TP... but no rubbing alcohol. Lots of soup this week (that aisle was stripped bare during Texas' Deep Freeze!), but fewer brands. Odds of finding your favorite flavor are iffy. My store has stopped stocking my favorite tea (Twining's Jasmine Green Tea if you're wondering). Since it's obvious they don't plan on stocking it again, I'm now ordering it online in big boxes. I think most folks have an item or twenty they just get online now. I've noticed grocery can aisles are shorter than in the Before Time, whereas prepared or partially prepared (chopped veg or kits and such) have much more supermarket real estate. (This struck me as funny during our Deep Freeze weeks. A friend stocked up for upcoming arctic weather... with freezer/refrigerator food. The power outage surprised her. Me, with my weather-proof, unpowered cans, was sympathetic.)
4) Family and Friends. A year of Zoom and Skype calls, or regular ol' phone calls, of emails, texts, and, oddly paper letters! later, many casual friendships have disappeared, but other relationships persist. Now and then I'll synchronize making a cup of coffee with a friend and we'll chat and sip, connected by voices over the aether. It kinda works. An unexpected problem though: when no one goes anywhere or sees anyone... there's less to talk about. I've heard about one friend's exciting recent activity four times now - and I react like it's new! every time! because it's just so nice to hear their voice. On the plus side, I've discovered that it really is possible to make new friends online. (Carefully, obviously, but it's possible and welcome!)
The hard part is when there is a health issue - as with older relatives there necessarily will be. Travel by air or car between states is difficult and discouraged; some states have quarantines that add expense and delay; and then hospitals mostly do not allow family to visit. I'm not arguing with these safety rules! I only point out that they are hurdles. I know of folks dealing with illnesses, deaths, funerals, and settling estates during this pandemic... the process is even more painful than before. And, honestly, this is in a family that's been blessedly, lightly touched by covid, losing one person to date, not more. And also, for the most part, blessedly untouched by the economic fallout too.
5) Economy and Society. The economic fallout from covid is very real. I see it most, personally, in the state of theater, which is Closed. (I'm out of work, yes, but I'm still housed and fed so I'm grateful. Others? Not so lucky.) Theater will come back - with or without me. Part-reason for my confidence about that is that more covid-relief seems to be finally on its way from Washington. That will help. Vaccinations, proceeding faster now, will help too. Theater can't reopen until the pandemic is controlled. The greater political situation... well, who knows? No one, that's who. But it looks more hopeful than it did a year ago.
So. A strange year passing. And, approaching, comes a strange new "normal."
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