28 April 2020 was supposed to be the day, shortly after his first birthday, that my son would start nursery. Instead, due to the lockdown the UK is currently under and the global pandemic of Covid-19, I have slipped seamlessly from Maternity Leave to Furlough in one remote zoom meeting.
This odd, open-ended extension to maternity leave might be a relatively niche experience, but I join the ranks of thousands of UK workers placed on pause, my industry unable to operate without people gathered together. I work in theatre; we live, eat, sleep, and breathe the shared experience of live interaction between performer and audience. I am a producer; responsible for future planning when the future is a string of questions with no idea when we might get answers. Professionally speaking, I am currently useless. It’s as if my profession no longer exists, because theatre as we know it cannot exist in lockdown.
And I feel suspended in time, as many people must do right now, postponing a major rite of passage that I had been dreading: handing my child over to the care of strangers in order to return to paid employment.
I am grateful for a reprieve.
I am frustrated by the increased sentence.
Before all this, I worked in a small, friendly and very supportive company, so it wasn’t that I was dreading going back to them. Instead, I was dreading the emotional toll of conflict and guilt; that I would miss my baby, viscerally, physically. That I might cry all the way from the nursery to my office. That I might enjoy using my brain again. That I might have forgotten how to think, plan, or even function in my professional role. I dreaded that I might realise how much I missed my old life and I dreaded regretting returning to work at all.
I imagined that I would enjoy wearing dresses I hadn’t worn for two years, because they didn’t grant quick and easy access for tiny searching hands and a nuzzling mouth. I imagined aching breasts distracting me in meetings, and leaking milk staining these dresses.
Many, many people have been through these stages of guilt, worry, conflict and also relief - delight even - to reconnect with a part of themselves forgotten in the overwhelming, seismic shifts of new parenthood. I am not the first; I will not be the last. But now the moment of reckoning is postponed; new ETA unknown.
For now, my son is learning to walk a few paces at a time before he has to turn his trolley around a bit of furniture or through a doorway. Instead of the playground, he is climbing the stairs, sliding down piles of cushions and being swung, hoisted and bounced around by my partner and I who are shamelessly using him as part of our own exercise regime.
He waves at his relatives on the screen when we video call them and he also waves at their photos in the frames on our walls, a little confused that they don’t wave back. He squeals with excitement when we see other children out on our daily walk. He has always been a cheerful, sociable baby; we enjoyed lots of groups and activities. Now of course I worry that this period of lockdown is going to affect him in ways I won’t be able to detect, or that won’t show until much later.
I worry he is bored; I know I am bored.
I am waiting for something to shift; for a change that signifies the way forward. I do not know - no one knows - what the world might look like when we emerge from our isolations.
There are many traditions and superstitions in theatre. Some have practical origins, like that of the ghost light. An auditorium, when all the lights are turned out, should be completely pitch dark. The ghost light was a single small bulb - usually left on in the centre of the stage - that ensured anyone going to access lighting controls could do so safely. These days we tend to have easier ways to avoid this hazard but the image (and the superstitions associated with it) endure.
When theatres across the UK closed their doors on 16 March, we referred to them as having ‘gone dark’ - a term used widely in the industry to mean both temporary and permanent, planned and unplanned closures. More generally of course it means ceasing communication, usually suddenly and without explanation, in order to avoid danger. This feels apt; theatre is a way to communicate our stories and experiences, from the personal and domestic to the global and epic.
On that day there were many theatre venues around the country that had ‘gone dark’, but their ghost lights were left on. A promise that we will be back, that the light will return, and that the shows will go on.