As theatre leaders, we have all “hit the wall,” slamming into an emergency or a crisis so hard that we think to ourselves, “It’s impossible –my theatre will never come back from this.” Certainly COVID-19 was an experience of uncertainty common to all of us as we worked through that astonishing time together.

However, what happens when we are alone in our challenges, when our theatre is tested in ways both public and private, where we have feared for its very survival? It is in those moments that we ask ourselves how we can transform that fear into action. How do we turn the challenges into another part of our journey, embrace the changes, and grow this experience into something filled with new possibilities? Ultimately, can we not just survive. but thrive? 

In this article, AACT-member theatres continue to prove that the answer to that last question is a resounding “Yes!”