
Is anybody else ready to call “Cut!” on 2021? I know I am. Although quite a bit better than 2020 on several levels (the summer was epic!), the year is truly going out with a whimper and not a bang. As I write, I am lying in my sickbed in the dead of ice-cold-winter in Winnipeg, instead of being in the rehearsal room. Yup. You guessed it: I have COVID. I had managed to make it this far without casualty, even getting my booster last week (yay!). All to no avail. I have no idea whatsoever how I contracted it, because to have been much more careful than I was, I would have had to be in a hermetically sealed bubble.
Work had gotten off to a good start, with a team excited to finally bring this work to life, everyone ready, greasing their wheels yet again after so many months of not much singing in live spaces. I was about to have a costume fitting for my fabulous Audrey Hepburnesque outfits (yay again!) when an increasingly worsening scratchy throat and a positive rapid test scuttled all our plans. And here we are. To date, no one else is sick. Yet.
I’ve grown philosophical about the whole thing. There was nothing I could do to prevent it, there is nothing I can now do to prevent anyone else from getting it, other than putting myself out of circulation. If the production has to be shut down YET AGAIN, that is what we will have to do. And yet, there’s a deep sense of longing to tell this story and to be sharing it with a live audience once again. Keep your fingers crossed for us, and I’ll see you on the other side of New Year’s. Meanwhile, let’s call it a day on this second pandemic year. I’m done.