It’s been almost three weeks since Governor Polis declared a state of emergency in Colorado.
Since that time, we cancelled our spring show, the Dairy Arts Center shut down, and all venues, bars, and restaurants were closed – lights going out across our town, one by one.
Yet the star on Flagstaff is shining on the mountainside again, out of season, offering its eternal message of hope, inclusion, and continuity. We will get through this, it says, and we will do it together.
At VIVA, most of our players, volunteers, and audiences are in the over-sixty crowd, and therefore more at risk from the infinitesimally tiny infectious agent known as the coronavirus. We fervently hope that each and every one of you reading this newsletter stays healthy and in good spirits. Though our age increases our vulnerability to this particular epidemic, being over sixty confers on us some unique advantages during this crisis: we’ve seen this movie before!
• Some of our VIVA members lived through the Great Depression, where everything – including food – was in short supply.
• Some of us lived through World War II and the Korean War, where death was the uninvited guest on every block.
• The post-war generation, the oldest of whom is now 75, grew up crawling under school desks in preparation for a nuclear holocaust. In the 1960s our cities decayed, riots swept the country, and families turned against each other. The end of the world didn’t come then, either.
Disasters are not ordinary events, but the perspective of our personal histories tells us that those disasters will pass. We hope this one will pass sooner rather than later. Until it does, we are planning for the time when we can all open our doors and play again – together – in the great theater of life.
Stay safe, everyone.
