This week the Government freed us to have live events again. Of course there are provisos, risk assessments as long as your arm and hoops and hurdles. But there may yet be time in 2020 to dust off the props, do a few stretches and take to the road.
I warmly welcome the notion even though it will be very different from the years BC (Before Covid). No more Pirate Song, prizes or cash in the hat. No finger chopper. Audiences in discreet bubbles. Hand sanitiser. A very different affair. As is life now, despite all that many people are doing and pretending in the crazy drive to re-monetise our stricken economy. I drove through Chester yesterday and there was not one face mask to be seen as they walked past photos of Boris wearing one on front page headlines saying ‘Wear masks in shops’. What is it about our stupid pride that makes us not take a simple precaution that would save thousands of lives?
I had thought that the August Bank Holiday Isle of Wight Steam Show would be the first one back but we will have to wait for the announcement. I’m sworn to secrecy. But I do have Fylde Show in pen in the diary for September 12th and 13th. It’s a new show for me, run by another septuagenarian, a vintage tractor collector and a stalwart fellow. He is determined to carry on and I will be there, hopefully with Martin on the keyboards alongside, carrying on our noble and time-honoured tradition of entertainment and amusement, divertissements and badinages. And hopefully no bandages for those who may have misread that!
The shows will have to adapt and change to suit the Covid detachment. They will have to be more visual and perhaps more stylised. But we will adapt and develop in the new world as we have always done in the popular performing arts. I hope that our colleagues in the formal live theatre can find a way to adapt to the new world. How would you direct a scene that involved close up contact between two characters when the two actors playing them were from different bubbles? One of the many many such problems facing serious theatre. I hope they find the solutions but I fear that theatre, as many things, will never be quite the same again.
My new streaming show will be available later this week once I have checked a few final things with the software. I will announce it on the website and on my Facebook page, but I thought you, my faithful blog readers, would like to know about it first. If you’d like to pencil in a show drop me a line by email to david@mralexander.co.uk. Be amongst the first to witness it. I will do each 30 minute spot by arrangement with up to four different families or bubbles via Zoom and there will be a chance to watch some live stunts, play some games and magic as well as see some filmed extracts from the stage show. Prizes will be posted to all the children. There will not be any admission fees as such but of course the virtual top hat (https://mralexander.co.uk/donate) will be placed casually and unobtrusively in front of you as you leave! I’m looking forward to it. It will be the closeup and personal dimension that will be have to be missing from the stage show. There will be a chance to chat, share lockdown stories and see Mr A in his emporium of entertainment and wonder. And when Martin comes back there will also be live music.
It seems to have taken me a long time to adapt to the changes. Maybe it’s age. Children and young people can just go with the flow and take the changes as they arrive without worrying too much. I worry about them in the new world though. For those of us who have good memories we will always have those sunny days of Pirate Songs and finger chopper routines, of closeup live magic and crowds sitting crammed into every square inch in the summer sunshine. Will they only ever have face masks and digital onscreen communication with people other than those in their own bubbles? Will they grow up believing that life has always been like this and read uncomprehendingly of the days when we could shake hands, hug a long lost friend and share a drink from the same bottle of water?
All the best, at last, from a road near you,
Mr Alexander
No comments:
Post a Comment