Shortly after theatre (and the world) came to a screeching halt in 2020, The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas in Austin undertook a project to document this particular moment in time. As they desribe on their website:
“The global closure of theatres due to the COVID-19 pandemic is without precedent in modern times. This also has been a year of reckoning with longstanding racial injustices highlighted by movements like Black Lives Matter and #WeSeeYouWAT. Theatres are closing permanently. Others are reimagining how they safely engage with audiences. Countless theatre professionals have found themselves suddenly unemployed.
The theatre industry is already radically different than it was at the beginning of 2020, and historians looking back at this moment will want to understand the many ways it has changed. The Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin, a major research center for the study of the history of theatre and performance, has launched a new collecting initiative aiming to document this moment.”
At the time I was creating my own archive of the moment by reaching out to playwrights through my podcast, The Subtext. I was collecting their stories and memorializing plays that had been canceled due to the pandemic (one of them being my own Welcome to Keene, NH). When I saw the Harry Ransom Center’s call for contributions, I reached out to contribute my podcast episodes.
Later I participated in their oral history series alongside many other playwrights and folks associated with the theater. Eric Colleary, Curator of Theatre & Performing Arts for The Harry Ransom Center, and I spoke over zoom for an hour about the abrupt change to our lives.
Eric Colleary and The Harry Ransom Center have done a great service for future researchers investigating this time in history and how it impacted theatre makers throughout the United States.