The impact of COVID-19 on the American theater industry is immeasurable: the terrible loss of life, the indefinite cancellation of productions, the sudden stop in hard-earned livelihoods. The industry touted it as an intermission of sorts and, two years later, a majority of theaters nationwide are resuming in-person programming. But many of those who sustain the scene have since pivoted away from the stage.
“There’s the risk that we’re losing a generation of people and their unique skill sets, which is necessary for this sector of the industry to function,” says Carson Elrod, co-founder of Arts Workers United. “The theater is not a cause or a charity or sort of feel-good peripheral thing. We’re an integral, dynamic cornerstone to economies all over this country; we’re one of the nation’s biggest exports. And if we’re not doing what we do because we end up doing other jobs, the greater American economy will suffer.”
For numerous artists and arts workers, the collective pause since 2020 spurred an unprecedented reflection on what they weren’t getting from their prepandemic jobs and what precarious elements they had long tolerated for the love of the art form. Some are leaving the door open to return to theater someday. Others say they’ll never go back. Here are 10 of their stories.
‘My gender was always a performance’
L. Villegas was initially pushed toward opera over musical theater because, as her teachers at West L.A.’s Hamilton High School pointed out, “I wasn’t naturally the thinnest girl.” Her weight often fluctuated throughout her years in Chicago’s regional productions and New York’s developmental rooms.
“I was so busy hating my body in such a specifically gendered way that I didn’t even know I could hate my body for a totally different reason,” she recalls. Just before the pandemic, the 35-year-old responded to a Craigslist ad from a famed florist in Providence, R.I., and has since…