loving the plague
theatre's failure
five years ago, the theatre (industry)/world decided to love the plague rather than prevent or combat it. it was a decision made for the sake of the ‘economy’ and not the people and definitely not for upgrading safety to workplaces.
quietly, SARS2 liability language was part of the fine print when you bought a ticket to an in person event (the venue states that they know SARS2 is dangerous but you as ‘consumer’ are willingly walking into a space via the price of admission knowing you may likely be infected. the onus placed upon the individual rather than the venue to do due diligence to maintain a safe space).
soon, performers were even going so far as to ‘give each other SARS2’ at the start of rehearsal processes to “get it over with.” (sad fact - as strange as it may seem).
harm became the ‘norm’ upon which other harms (structural and systemic) were stacked.
add to racism, sexism, ageism, ableism, misogyny, and turning a blind eye to predatory behavior by those in Power the harm of forced exposure to a life-damaging illness for which there is still no cure or viable treatments and you are looking at a societal powder keg. an additional passive-aggressively condoned harm unthinkable prior to 2019.
is it any wonder to watch the naked skeleton of surveillance and vulture/catastrophic capitalism and colonialism (and the unambivalent reinforcement of colonial mimicry -rather than its ambivalent position per Homi Bhabha) take over the ecocidal, genocidal campaigns of the US and some of its allies against people and other living things and the planet since then?
a world that tolerates and passively promotes one harm, via corporate malfeasance and willful state-sanctioned negligence, will bear and/or lead to others. this dead world is not simply the result of one Orange Man and his enablers and funders. to play that game is to not understand how obeying in advance to harms deemed passive by Power pave the way for exponential harms to come.
to speak of the lack of public health in the theatre industry/world has become controversial unless the lack is articulated as a story set in the past (witness new plays about the AIDS ‘era’ that situate organized abandonment by the state ‘back then’ as a sad relic of another unenlightened time rather than connecting the dots to now). when the occasion does arise to speak of the lack in the present, often storytellers on visible stages choose the conveniently media-condoned “in the time of Covid,” as if it were a time relegated to 2020-21. By doing so, the narrative of false normalcy is undisturbed and the “passive” harm persists.
when a colleague shrugs and says “that’s just the way things are now,” they could just as easily use that learned helpless shrug to describe how in the “West” all harms must be tolerated. it is a soft form of fascism (accept or else) that co-exists insidiously with the harder form evident in the forced arrests and detention of the undocumented or those perceived to be so on US city streets and the inexcusably vile treatment of people and lands oppressed and bombarded by occupiers.
harm is harm. harm equals harm. no one gets out alive. the zone of interest is multiplied.
400 million people (and counting) around the world have Long Covid, 6 million of those are children. Year seven. Propagandist storytellers have chosen to sweep the lives of these people and those of the dead (over one million and more in the US alone that have still not yet been memorialized) under the proverbial rug and ‘move on.’ Joy is spoken of as an act of resistance, and is used as a self-censorious cover to excuse the harms of the state, and those of the population that have surrendered to it with their collectively deranged/traumatized shrug. Labor movements have refused to pick up the baton to ensure workplace safety and public health. a class war is being waged by those in the ruling class and enforced by those clinging aspirationally to an imagined ‘middle.’ austerity reigns alongside exponential sickness. while the planet burns, not by its own doing, but by a human-made tragedy.
there is a hole in the center of the world, and it is growing deeper every day. unless something is done to move the needle past denialism (of climate crisis and interpandemic reality). the censor need be lifted on speaking the truths about illness (and this includes the disease which is capitalism) and societal neglect. fighting the power is also about fighting your own complicity with power. until that is met, head-on or sideways, the hole will devour humanity.
theatre has a role to play. instead of shying away, dancing into Power’s arms. resistance is resistance and sometimes it doesn’t look or behave like performative joy. bodies of “illness” are to be reckoned with, especially if the harms being perpetuated are in the name of how to stop worrying and love the plague.
(April 15-19, 2026. join the first ever Inspire Arts Festival where you can hear scenes from my play The Left, and more. info at tinyurl.com/InspireFestRSVP)