Renée Jaworski- co-Artistic Director, Pilobolus

My job, my specialization, my expertise, is to bring people together to have a shared experience. Put people in the same room to make something, to learn something, to watch something, to feel something. The medium and language I use to do this is theater and dance. 

When Beth asked me to write something, I procrastinated. What do I have to say that is any different than the next person? At this point aren’t we all just going through the same thing? Feeling the same thing? Saying the same thing? 

I recently realized, as we all watch and listen with bated breath to everything that is COVID-19, that it is like a good performance. Some have seats that are closer to the stage. Some feel the feels more than others. Some will understand it all right away, and for some the realization of what they are experiencing won’t hit them for a few days, weeks, months or years. But it will change us all. 

As I watch this performance I am engaged at times, I am bored at times. Sometimes I laugh, and sometimes I cry. I am affected by how it is affecting my fellow audience members, especially the ones that are sitting with me. I don’t always agree with my fellow audience members about what is “good” or “bad.” It is all subjective and I cannot see it through their eyes. One’s experience is as unique as they are and I believe that every audience member is unique and much smarter than me. I know this as a creator and producer and yet as we navigate our way through this global pandemic, I seemed to forget that I am also “in the audience” all the time. 

In reality, this virus is more effective than any creator or producer that exists out there. It is the ultimate expert at bringing people together for a shared experience. Everyone on this earth is in the audience having a unique but shared experience whether they bought a ticket or not.

In this time, though it may be obvious to most, my realization of just how inevitable shared experience is kinda blew my mind. How proud I am to be able to curate these experiences! But also how indifferent the world is to whether I do it or not. These experiences will be made with or without me by other humans as well as other organisms that exist on and off of this planet.  

So, oddly, I continue to be inspired to make. To allow this to transform what and how I make just like every other life experience would and should. But in writing this piece I have given myself the permission to be “in the audience” and have that unique experience. 

That is how I feel today, but in a few days or weeks, months or years….?