The Strangest Year: Theatre in the Time of COVID-19

Abstract

This chapter offers a personal reflection of how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted on the devising process of the Creative Arts Team (CAT) Youth Theatre in 2020 and 2021. First, it introduces CAT Youth Theatre, a community theatre programme at the City University of New York that has been running for over 25 years. Second, it maps the journey undertaken by the youth theatre members through the various phases of the pandemic. Third, it presents the group’s artistic project, The Strangest Year, an unexpected result of feeling displaced from their own space and from conventional theatricality. Through personal narrative and participants’ vignettes, this reflective practitioner account covers various phases of evolving understanding within digital displacement, from the initial disbelief at having to attempt doing theatre online, to acceptance of the situation at hand, to finally reaching a sense of accomplishment in creating something innovative in virtual, creative spaces.