Coda and Postscript

Abstract

The chapters in this collection, individually and as a whole, broach questions of futurity: what have scholars, practitioners, and audiences learned across the first years of the COVID pandemic, and what of those learnings makes sense to carry forward into an unknown future? Across the book, an array of answers to this first question surfaces—strategies of adaptation, experimentation with forms and platforms, new methods of training practitioners and players for the future. The wherefore of these strategies and methods provides an answer to the second question. These practices arose from COVID necessity, but ultimately lend themselves to expanded access and community formation in ways hitherto unrealized—strategies and methods that succeeded in these arenas are the ones to carry forward. Play during COVID (inclusive of the arts industries generally, theatre, performance, gaming, internet culture) has stepped into the place of governments and health authorities which have vacated responsibilities to constituents. These forms of play have succeeded in making lives and livelihoods when so many industries were unviable, supporting health (mental and otherwise) during an ongoing public health crisis, and ultimately building community and connection across mandated physical distance.