It’s been two years since Covid hit. It’s been a long two years. One weekend the Newton Nomadic Theater had just opened a fabulous new production of No Exit and a few days later a news story took over our lives. The whole world changed and everything was shut down, including the production of our our new play.
The thing about a play, is that a lot of work goes into the preparation. The actors typically rehearse for 5 – 6 weeks before it opens and then they get paid per performance. So our actors had put in all the work, had put together an amazing show, and then got shut down. Not only was this amazing show shut down, but the actors wouldn’t get paid if the performances got canceled.
That first week when the shows were cancelled we decided to try doing a Nomad Story Slam on a new on-line platform called Zoom and we would stream it to Facebook Live. It was all thrown together in a few days with some new tech that we had never dealt with before but we did a Zoom Story Slam the following Friday. It was all a bit rickety but it worked. It had its share of technical screw-ups but it had some magic too. When that ended we decided to do a night of poetry the next week. The week after that we did an on-line play. The next week we decided to do the Lunatic Talent Jamboree – an online gonzo talent show.
In a few days, with the help of some of our actors and directors we recruited some world class talent and some of our friends and neighbors and put together a plan for an on-line wacko talent show. Over the years I’ve been involved with the Newton Nomadic Theater we have presented some amazing theatrical productions by incredibly talented actors and directors. That said, nothing we’ve ever done gave me more pleasure then the absolutely ridiculous Lunatic Talent Jamboree. It was a three ring circus full of world class talent combined with friends and neighbors doing silly things. Best of all it was thrown together in a few days with a crew of people who were all incredibly motivated to do something, anything, in those strange times. It was an absolute mess from a technical point of view, full of missed cues, randomly switching video, and sound glitches. Despite it all, the sheer exuberance of so many people showcasing their eccentric talents in living rooms around the world brought me back to the first weird weeks of Covid lock-down in 2020.
Check it out here – but jump ahead 4 minutes to the start. You might hate it, you might like it, but today it is an eccentric memento to the start of the Covid madness. Check out Lori Glasser at 43:17. I forgot about that one and it made me laugh again..
Best of all, between the four on-line events that the Newton Nomadic Theater was able to do in the first four weeks of lock-down, and the generosity of our audience, we were able to pay the No Exit actors for all of their cancelled performances. Many thanks to the generosity of the Newton Nomadic audience and to all these lunatics who donated their lunacy.
