COVID-19 Closures: Caitlin Grace Rose (Fresno Pacific University)

The COVID-19 pandemic continues change the world as we know it. As closures and performance cancellations have put actors out of school and work, I’ve been reaching out to the artists affected. Here are their stories.

It’s Saturday evening and I am in the living room of my parents house watching the rainstorm make the blossoms from our plum trees fall like pale pink snowflakes. My cat sleeps next to me, the fire is burning slowly, my parents and dog sleep in the other room and my brother is blasting music from upstairs. Seems pretty typical for evening at home.

But this is no ordinary evening.

Last week, if I had thought about what I would be doing today, I imagined myself packing up my things and getting ready to head back to University after spring break. I’d be texting my friends asking them when they were getting back so we all could meet at the cafeteria and catch up about the road trips we went on. I would not have imagined that I would be spending four extra weeks at my parents house due to my school switching from in-person classes to online ones after news of the COVID-19 pandemic getting worse.

As someone with a chronic illness, I am more worried about this virus than most people would be. A simple virus could land me in the hospital if I wasn't careful. Not to mention, possibly passing it on to my parents who are on the older side (in comparison to all the friends close to my age). I have a stash of snacks in my room to use primarily for low blood sugars but are also good cheap snacks you can purchase more of (and I bough these long before all the madness began). Once I officially move out of my dorm in the coming weekdays, I will be hiding out at home and trying to not go stir-crazy (which is a joke to those who know me personally).

This year is my senior year at Fresno Pacific University and our spring musical, The Spitfire Grill is most likely cancelled (no official word yet). We are now working on self-tapes for the Auditioning class and I have no clue what we’ll be doing for Drama Practicum. Luckily, most of my classes are online anyways, so this change probably won’t be as challenging for me as it will be for my friends who aren’t used to taking 4+ online classes at a time. Online classes post a different set of challenges because teacher-student contact is limited and you can’t bounce ideas off of your other classmates like you can with in-person classes. You also have to be way more diligent with your time management (nows the time to become a planner addict readers)!

So for the next four weeks, aside from school, I will be working with a group of theatre students on a top-secret musical we were chatting about, redesign my bedroom and working on my solo-act for another show I am part of, called Shame In Society. As far as Shame in Society goes, we meet bimonthly because we’re still in the scriptwriting process and it’s not school related so I have no idea if we will postpone rehearsals. We don’t perform until August so thankfully, I think that show is safe.

But until then I will try my best to not let this pandemic and all the public madness get the best of me and I will be counting down the days until I get to see all my friends again.

Tia, Maddie, Bao, Kaitlyn, Jackie, Arlet, Jacob and MTM (our director), I love you guys! We will get through this…somehow.

Caitlin Grace Rose is a senior at Fresno Pacific University studying Early Child Development and theatre. Previous theatre roles include Reagan in Camping, FIT in Framed! A Fairytale Mystery and Rosa in Beauty & The Buccaneer. Previous dance roles include Clara/Sugar Plum Fairy in Believe In Christmas and the Mother Nature Fairy in Fairy Garden Ballet. Her hobbies include making YouTube videos, playing with her dog, raising awareness for Type 1 Diabetes and fangirling over her favorite musicals.

Blog