Theatre in the Time of Corona

It's been a long time since my last blog.  Normally by now I'd have written about Dallas Fan Expo, the newly revived HOT Con, our last two shows: The Tinker of Tivoli and Silent Sky, Sherwood, and Scarborough Faire.  I'd be looking forward to writing about EGX (formerly Geekfest) and our annual trip to Kilgore for the Texas Shakespeare Festival. But here were are in the middle of a global pandemic and for the first time since the Spanish Flu of 1918, the theatres have closed.  It's our own modern day plague.  Any day I expect we'll have a ginormous fire that will burn most of London down, yes it's really that bad. 

So far I've had one former student catch it.  I don't know anyone else personally who has it, but even so, most of my theatre friends are out of work as are Rob's musician friends.  I have two nurse friends on the front lines dealing with Covid patients every single day.  Most of my sewing friends are making masks, which is great and I applaud them.  Sarah was at her grandma's and they made masks for the whole family.  Sarah broke five needles doing it, but hey! we have masks to wear to HEB.  The rest of school is worse than cancelled, it's still going on but all online, which means I'm teaching my students and homeschooling my three children at the same time. None of what I'm doing is great, but it's something. 

The only thing keeping me sane is theatre.  I'm going through Netflix series like Fig Newtons and Chai, which is rapidy.  I've finally gotten to watch all of last year's Oscar winners and am waiting for this year's winners to stream. Fortunately, there's been a huge outpouring of love from the theatre community and some theatres have been streaming their past shows.  TSF is streaming a new (old) play every Saturday through May and The National Theatre in London is streaming one every Thursday from now till May.  Even better, Bloomsbury has made all of its theatre offerings available as a free trial to colleges which includes all 30 of The National's productions.  Which means I have till May 31 to watch the 29 I hadn't seen yet.  We saw Frankenstein in the cinema for Rob's birthday two years ago.  So to keep myself from going crazy and to keep my mind sharp, I've decided to write blogs on the shows that I'm watching. 

Here's a list of upcoming National Theatre productions that I will blog about next week:
One Man, Two Guvners with James Corden
Treasure Island
Twelfth Night with Tamsin Greig as Malvolio
She Stoops to Conquer