Jim Dalglish

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Writing for Theatre in the Time of COVID-19

Jim Dalglish

A Playwright’s Innovative Response to the Pandemic…

Nearly every theatre company in the US has had to re-think their offerings since the arrival of the coronavirus last Spring. Most have canceled their entire seasons. Some have erected tents and offered limited seating for performances that didn’t require actors to come into close physical proximity. Many have offered Zoom play readings and workshops in efforts to keep the creative lights on during the pandemic.

Theatrical Innovation

What I haven’t seen a lot of, however, are new plays and scripts written specifically to accommodate the physical distancing requirements that theatre companies face. A few adventurous theatres have been extremely innovative in tackling pandemic production constraints.

(I have included some of these theatres and production entities with links to their efforts at the bottom of this article.)

But I’d like to tell you about a script I have written that can be rehearsed, performed, and shared in ways that will allow the actors, theatre artists, and audiences to experience the work safely.

New Play Concept

The play/script I have written is called “Trojan Woman.” It is set in Minneapolis during the tumultuous Spring of 2020 and follows the life of a 6th-grade school teacher as she struggles to organize her classes, take care of her healthcare-worker mother, and ensure the safety of her young child. The play examines life from the beginning of the pandemic through the Black Lives Matter protests that rocked the city in the wake of the George Floyd murder. The play has strong female leads. Three of the characters are Black. Download “Trojan Woman.”

New Way to Tell a Story

The play investigates how the pandemic has completely changed the way people communicate with each other. The play/script tells the story as a series of Zoom meetings, Slack conferences, FaceTime phone calls, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram posts, phone calls, emails, and text messages. To preserve these evanescent experiences, screen recording applications are used as the story plays out.

Most of these applications - Zoom, Slack, FaceTime, etc. - present videos of their users as they interact with each other. These videos - including screen captures of the apps themselves - are captured with the screen grab recording apps. These recordings are then edited into a video that can be shared with the world - behind a paywall if necessary to recoup investment.

12 Episode “Series”

The script is divided into 12 episodes that can be viewed one at a time or binged all at once. The total recording time is estimated at between 90 minutes and 2 hours. The episodes vary in time length to accommodate the action and passage of time within the script.

New Way to write a Play

Creating a play script that can communicate how these online apps can be used and recorded was challenging. In the script I include the application name and descriptions of how each is to be used with descriptions of what the actors are ‘doing' as they used them. It’s not as complicated as it sounds. If you can read a play script, you will be able to read this one.

Download the play

Click on the link below and fill out the forms. Then click SUBMIT and you will be given a link to download a PDF of the play.

Download “Trojan Woman.”

Innovative Theatres & Their Projects

I feel my approaches to producing for theatre during the pandemic are pretty unique. But there is more than one way to present work during these challenging times. The following theatres and production organizations are following their own innovative ideas and are creating fascinating works of theatre that you should check out.

A special thanks to Elena Araoz and Barbara Fuchs of Howlround and to Digital and Distanced Advances in the Theater Arts. Their wonderful essay “Crowdsourcing Theatre Practice in a Time of Covid” helped me out enormously with this list of innovative theatres who are doing what it takes to share their art with the world in these challenging times.