Last week I heard of the passing of yet another opera colleague. Not one that knew personally, but one who I know touched the lives of so many people and of whom many glowing things were spoken. The composer Carlisle Floyd also passed away in the last days of September. His opera Susannah was the first show I called as an AGMA stage manager. I loved that piece – beautiful and darkly dramatic. Kind of like a Tosca for our age. A “shabby little shocker” and a great evening at the theatre.
A few weeks prior, I heard of the passing of a beloved director with whom I had worked with many times. A wonderful gentleman who loved life and drama and met it with kindness, generosity and a twinkle in his eye. From him I learned that the relationship between the artist and the audience is one of humility and gratitude and never to take for granted the privilege we have of being able to tell stories for a living.
I’ve always hated opening night parties and closing night parties. After opening nights, the director and design team leaves and you have to say good-bye. And then again on closing night you say good-bye to the cast and crew. I am wretched at saying good-bye. It always feels uncomfortable and makes me self-conscious. I work at a job where saying good-bye and moving on is a certainty – so why is there so much sentimentality for something that is just part of the job? On the other hand I think creating something forms bonds and properly saying good-bye honors that in a way. At any rate, I’ve taken to trying not to say good-bye. I say, “Until next time.”
This morning I went on a bright autumn walk with a friend. She is a former opera colleague, and we got to talk about the recent deaths of beloved industry colleagues. “The thing I think that is the hardest,” I said, “is that one of the joys of our profession is the idea of ‘until we meet again’. You never know when you will work together, but you have faith that paths will cross and art will be made. And now, there are so many people that we know we will never work with them again. It’s even more hard particularly right now when we’ve waited so long for even the possibility of working with them again.”
The pandemic – and life during the pandemic – has taken so many lives since March of 2020. There is something so very raw and personal, though, about the passings of these last few weeks. Maybe it’s because they were people whom I had a connection with, that I still held out hope of working with. Maybe it’s because after a year and a half of colleagues and collaborators being so distant, we are finally emerging to come together again in rehearsal rooms, familiarly and with new precautions. And that emergence had brought the glimmer of possibility that those relationships that had been banked will now be able to be stoked and rekindled.
Many of my colleagues in the arts have managed to work through the pandemic. They’ve brilliantly embraced technology and health and safety protocols to create on their own and with other people. I’ve enjoyed seeing many of their efforts and held their tenacity to our art with awe and a little bit of jealousy. But aside from seven weeks this summer, I have felt too overwhelmed with the fires on the domestic front to contemplate looking for work in this new pandemic cautious world.
As I’ve watched these projects scroll across my social media feeds, I’ve been happy for those that manage to still create and support creators. And I’ve known that yes, someday, I would be able to get back out there too, and thought, wouldn’t it be cool to work with those people too? And that possibility brought a hopeful buoyancy to that part of me that loved my job and what we do. While I am struck with the loss of future collaborations, I know that there will be many more to come. Yet still, I grieve those who will no longer be with us when the curtain goes up again.