Chicago Shakespeare Theater is presenting “Twelfth Night,” opening Oct. 25. Of course I was invited. I’ve been going to CST for decades, from before it moved to Navy Pier. I used to say it is a joy just to sit in the polished-wood tribute to Shakespeare’s Globe theater and soak in the surroundings. The fact they also put on a play is a bonus.
I clicked on the email, and suddenly the hassle to get there rose up before my eyes like a cloud of gnats. The train downtown. The cab to Navy Pier. The long walk past the carnival of crap dangled in front of tourists. The tourists themselves. Sitting in the aforementioned theater, glancing around at my fellow theatergoers.
“I used to recognize people,” I’ll complain to my wife. “Now I don’t recognize anybody.”
I didn’t RSVP. The matter would have been forgotten had the Sun-Times on Tuesday not run a story (front-page headline: “CULTURE SHOCK”) about dwindling theatrical audiences.
Honestly, I felt both indicted — I’m exactly the theatergoing demographic who has gone AWOL — and the strange disorientation when a newspaper story describes your exact condition, when you grab your paper, collapse on the couch and read: “Boomers, exhausted and bitter, sprawl on sofas, passively absorbing information using moribund technologies ...”
Attendance in Chicago theaters is down 60% from pre-pandemic levels, according to a Department of Cultural Affairs study.
“During the pandemic, people learned new habits — getting more of their entertainment online,” is how my colleague Stefano Esposito put it in the story. He’s got that right. Why trek downtown when I can tip back in my cool blue leather electric recliner — it’s like something from “WALL-E” — shovel popcorn in my maw and rewatch “The Crown”?
Online theater was just sad. When COVID-19 struck, in the spirit of being supportive, I watched a play online. If you put a gun to my head and demanded that I recall one aspect of the performance — the title, the actors, anything, — I’d be a dead man. Every detail is lost. Meanwhile, the definition of good theater, to me, is something that sticks with you. The online play never registered, but I can still see William L. Petersen slam his head against that filing cabinet in “In the Belly of the Beast.” Maybe the material was just better.
Is there more to it? I consider COVID-19 as societal trauma that we haven’t yet recovered from. People are more isolated. Time still has a weird, elastic quality. Before I checked, I genuinely was unsure whether “Twelfth Night” had already ended or not yet begun. When I raised the subject with my wife, we began discussing what plays we’ve seen in the past year.
“The Cherry Orchard” and .... “Shaw vs. Tunney,” right?
No, she said that was the summer before last.
“I’m fairly certain it was this summer,” I replied.
She didn’t think so. Actually, it was last May, and not being sure whether something happened five or 17 months ago seems very post-COVID-19.
Why did we attend those two particular plays? The first is no mystery. It had 1) Chekhov 2) director Bob Falls and 3) the Goodman Theatre, in that order. I once went to see a Chekhov play performed in Russian, at Chicago Shakespeare, now that I think of it.
Anything else? Over the past three years, theater companies have vigorously worked to become more inclusive, both with staff and material, and one has to wonder what effect that has had on old-line patrons, who really want to see Brian Dennehy in “Death of a Salesman” and may not be equally enticed by the prospect of seeing the hot new playwright from Belize. Audiences can be stubborn that way.
Plays are ephemeral — here briefly, then gone forever, never to return. Like life itself. A few weeks before COVID-19 struck, we were in New York, and I took the family to see “Hadestown” on Broadway with André De Shields starring as Hermes. It was magnificent. I can’t tell you how it fortified me during the long shutdown to come, how I clung to De Shields’ cry of, “The world ... came back ... to life!”
Chicago has always been a theater town. And always will be, as long as audiences play our simple parts and show up. If we don’t, and continue cowering at home, both Chicago and ourselves will suffer.
I got my tickets to “Twelfth Night.”
