2020 was the first year since 2013 that I didn’t see a single theatrical performance.

Now, that has the potential to sound really stuffy and long-nosed as I sip my tea pinky-up and adjust my monocle, so do understand that my definition of live theater is loose. I’m not talking about strictly the opera, I include children’s productions, community theater, high school plays, and the occasional high-brow show as valid live plays to fit my criteria of “at least one per year”.

But,

I had the great fortune of having a sister who did seven plays throughout high school, and the even greater fortune of Turlock High School having a really excellent drama program. So much so that I’ve gone back and watched their shows even now that I’ve graduated. I was able to fall in love with theater at a younger age.

There’s a sort of barrier in most stories that fades away in live performance. It feels more authentic, closer, a stronger type of storytelling. Similar to a good book, live theater will make you forget that you’re part of the audience and you’ll start to feel as if you yourself are part of the world unfolding before you.

I told myself sometime in high school that I would try to see at least one play every year of my life.

And uh, that totally flopped, didn’t it?

So yes, in 2020 I did get to watch Hamilton on Disney plus along with the rest of the world, and yes, I did tear up at “It’s Quiet Uptown” (who didn’t?) but it still wasn’t the same as watching it live. I found myself thinking about and reminiscing on all the performances I’ve been to, not the least of which being some of the shows our very own Stan State has produced.

Unlike me, dear reader, you may very well still be attending Stanislaus in a post-pandemic world (Class of 2021 squad up!), and if that’s the case then please let me convince you to check out the productions of the Theatre Department. Listen, some of these shows were super good. Like, here’s two of them that live in my head rent free:

Boeing Boeing was a hilarious farce written in the 60’s about chauvinistic men trying to lead on multiple relationships by dating flight attendants that were never in the same place at the same time, until flights get cancelled and the various women all end up in the same spot on the same day, and the men start get their comeuppance.

It was fantastic, frantic, and had me busting a gut more than once ala the movie Clue, anything written by Neil Simon, and The Importance of being Ernest. The director, Stanislaus professor John Mayer, gave a reading pre-performance drawing comparisons between the sexist overtones of the play and the state of political figures at the time, and how in the end blatant bigotry never wins.

Boeing Boeing demolished my idea of college theater being the sort of stuffy “only for the arts” cliché that I had originally thought it had, making me go and drag friends to be able to laugh at Stanislaus shows with me.

In the same way that the movie Hidden Figures shined a light on the underrepresented work of women of color in NASA, Stanislaus’s production of Silent Sky, directed by Cynthia DeCure, shined a light on even earlier female contributions to astronomy by following the life of Henrietta Swan Leavitt, and the incessant life-long passion-driven work she conducted only for her work to be taken and claimed by male contemporaries for them to receive the legacy and fruits of her work.

Silent Sky was as heart-breaking, captivating, and eye-opening as only the best stories can be. At the end of my first viewing of the show, I walked away with the curious sensation of feeling so very small, and yet so powerful as well.

I was conscious of the speck of stardust that I was in the face of the Universe, as well as how if I commit myself to work and passion, that I could accomplish so so much like Henrietta Leavitt did.

Oh, and it also had killer costuming and a set that spun around on itself. Did I mention that this play took place at the turn of the Victorian Era? When I watched this show, all of my aesthetic Pinterest boards swooned along with me.

Stanislaus’s Theatre Department has some excellent directors, actresses/actors, and behind the scenes costume directors and stage workers. So good, that these plays I mentioned have twiddled their way into my mind for the last three years since I first saw them.

Today, the department works hard in the face of global pandemic and gathering restrictions to keep the work and the experience flowing for both their students and the art as a whole. While I hope that you’ll be able to catch one of their live showings in a post-pandemic world, in the meantime make sure to check their website https://www.csustan.edu/theatre and keep your ear to the ground so that you can be one of the first ones to catch it when their next event comes.

---

P.S. There’s great debate about whether it should be spelt “Theater” or “Theatre” so I did my best to use both and appease/infuriate everyone equally.