COVID-19 Closures: Isabella Harvey (AMDA)

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.

Living Amid The New York COVID-19 Panic

While the new year swept in, so did articles surrounding the new coronavirus. Distantly, I followed the news within the boundaries of Google searches and Twitter. It was exactly that: distant. The news was simply news, until it hopped the fence into reality for many Americans. And it's intimately close.

As a student actor living in the city, the impact of COVID-19 within my life is best introduced in an anecdote. Yesterday, I tackled the task of purchasing apples for a scene in my Friday evening acting class. The nearby Trader Joe’s encompassed grocery store havoc, with an entrance line slinking around the building. The operation for apples couldn’t be abandoned though, and I did endure the turmoil inside.

Once outside, I celebrated the errand by messaging my scene partner, and extended the invitation to re-block our scene without touching (abiding by temporary rules). However, that’s when I learned the trip was a fruitless endeavor.

It was for naught; classes for Friday were canceled.

This mirrored the day prior, when my school sent out an email implementing a new spring break occurring this upcoming week, which will be followed by two weeks of online classes. Students will have the option of finishing the semester online. I feel blessed to attend an institution taking rigorous precautionary measures while providing attentive alternatives. Nonetheless, every safeguard for COVID-19 had disadvantaged performing arts majors.

It would be severely ignorant to say it’s an inconvenience, because these are necessary measures. Public health is the priority. There is no way to work around the matter, and online coursework is arguably better than three weeks of lost tuition and no class. That aside, it is difficult to imagine how classes aimed for a musical theatre major will translate online. The territory is foggy and rather unexplored.

I don’t fathom anything supplemented in this brief time frame will be parallel to what I’m so grateful to experience in-person; granted, it is a difficult standard to compare to.

The timeline of my semester’s material has been thrown off balance. I don’t know if anything I’ve worked on will be revisited. Students who decide to leave don’t know what to pack for online classes. Students who decide to stay are risking a fourteen day building-wide quarantine should a case arise. International students are unsure whether to stay or leave due to uncertainty about reentering the country. Questions about midterms flutter about, concerns about dance classes formulate, and general panic from dance majors waft in.

There have been talks of retaking the semester. Graduation performances canceled. Something once seemingly far away is now too close for comfort. No one knows what to do about a crisis so unanticipated and indigestible.

Art has eased tension in times of crisis, and this will be no different.

It is a time to innovate creativity through supplemental means, and explore opportunities within boundaries.

As actors, we know how to adapt to circumstances.

Isabella Harvey is from Scottsdale, Arizona, and is completing her second semester studying Musical Theatre at the American Musical & Dramatic Academy in New York.

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