Life Imitating Art Imitating Life: How a Play Helped me Predict How COVID-19 Would Unfold
Kristy Smith, PhD. Candidate
Faculty of Education, York University
Bea: October 25, 1918. The town has been quarantined. Not because of illness, but because of fear of illness. No one is allowed to enter or leave. Well, you can leave, but you won’t get back in. Trains have been ordered not to stop. No pick ups or deliveries. The mail is piled outside of town and will be burned later.
Bea, Rose, Doris: Unity will not be victim to this disease.
Bea: Hallowe’en is cancelled.
Sissy: Schools are closed.
Stan: No spitting, hacking, coughing, or clearing throats to speak.
Michael: No kissing.
Doris: No public gatherings.
Rose: No church.
Mary: No weddings.
Bea: No funerals. (Kerr, 2002, p. 72)
When the first lockdown was announced, I knew how the COVID-19 pandemic would unfold. I’m not an epidemiologist, nor do I know anything about infectious diseases and how they spread. But as schools closed, weddings and funerals were cancelled, and we were encouraged to stay six feet apart from each other, I was haunted by the uncanny resemblance between real life in 2020, and the narrative of my favourite play, which took place in 1918.
Unity (1918) by Canadian playwright Kevin Kerr is a historical fiction about how a group of women living in Unity, a small town in Saskatchewan, coped with the Spanish influenza against the backdrop of the First World War. I spent a significant amount of time with this play in my undergrad as part of the show’s research team, the community outreach team, as well as the props and costumes departments, and when I was a teacher, I directed the play with a colleague and student actors in Grades 9–12. As the first restrictions were announced in the early days of COVID, I wondered how my former students were coping and if they, too, carried Unity (1918) into the coming years of unprecedented change. Were they anxious and trying to wrangle their loved ones into following public health guidelines, like Bea? Were they just trying to get through each day like Sunna, the town’s 15 year old mortician? Were they desperately missing someone they loved like Mary, the romantic waiting for her beloved to return from war? Or were they ignoring restrictions in pursuit of adolescent love and rebellion, like Bea’s younger sister, Sissy?
When I shared my predictions about how the pandemic would unfold with my family, it became clear that I was the most fearful. I predicted that schools and workplaces would remain closed for a long time, that weddings, funerals, and social events would be cancelled or postponed, and that generally, we would have to stay away from the people who populate all areas of our lives for months on end. I didn’t have faith that spending a few weeks at home would be enough to stop the spread, and I knew that COVID would fundamentally change us as individuals and as a society. I had spent too much time with Unity (1918) to believe that we would make it out of this pandemic unscathed.
It’s a haunting thing to watch scenes that you’ve analyzed, blocked, and rehearsed with students play out in real life. When I first read the play, I admired Sissy’s character. She’s fiercely unafraid, she’s hedonistic in a time when pleasure is seemingly impossible to find, and she leans into her fascination with “the end of the world” rather than living in fear. I remember hoping that if I faced a pandemic in my lifetime, I would be brave like Sissy. But I wasn’t. Instead, I resembled Bea: I was scared, I tried to manage my family’s movements, and I was jealous of people who seemed to be coping with the pandemic better than I was.
I was ecstatic when vaccinations became available, as they symbolized hope that we could safely return to a more “normal” life. What I did not expect was the resistance that a lot of people had in trusting a new vaccine, and I certainly did not expect an influx of conspiracy theories to bolster that resistance. But Unity (1918) had something to teach me here as well. While the townspeople don’t overtly resist a medical intervention to the flu, there are a few scenes that highlight the realities of how misinformation circulates in a crisis. Rose and Doris, the town’s switchboard operators, serve as the main source of information about the Spanish influenza. While they’re well-intentioned, they give inaccurate advice on how to avoid the flu and how to recover from it. It’s interesting to compare this period of time with the technologies we have now: Rose and Doris operated in a time when information was severely lacking, and in contrast, we exist in a time of information abundance. When our perspectives of the world are significantly influenced by digital spaces and the algorithms that drive them, it isn’t a far cry to claim that none of us are living in the same reality. While the internet undoubtedly brings us together, it also tears us apart. I try to keep this context in mind to hold grace for people who refused the vaccine or protested the restrictions issued by our governments.
Our own experiences and the forces that shape them deeply impact how we relate to what is happening in the world. Experiencing the pandemic through the lens of Unity (1918) makes that clear for me, and reminds me that the experiences that influence how we think about things can also lead us astray. While the play prepared me for most of how COVID would unfold, I was wrong about a key part: I didn’t think that masks were going to work. When mask mandates were first introduced, I wore them, but I was worried they wouldn’t help prevent the spread for one simple reason. In Unity (1918), everyone masks while staying 1 yard (3 feet) away from each other. But as the Spanish influenza was transmitted through airborne respiratory secretions, the masks don’t work, and many of the characters die.
The first year of COVID truly was an experience of life imitating art imitating life for me. Unity (1918) situates fictional characters within true historical events, thereby using the arts to tell stories about our history. COVID was a real life experience that eerily imitated this work of theatrical art in several ways. There were many elements of COVID that no play could have prepared me for, and holding this fictional story too close did make me distrustful of certain public health measures’ efficacy for a time. But overall, I am grateful that I had this play to carry me through the early stages of the pandemic. In addition to being a beautifully written script (which I highly recommend everyone read, especially now), it serves as a reminder that dark humour can bring light to the scariest of times. It reminds us that although physical proximity can be dangerous, our relationships with one another are life-giving when we’re surrounded by both literal and metaphorical death. I think a lot of us are tired of talking about the pandemic (myself included), and I wouldn’t have written this article had Unity (1918) not been so impactful for me. There aren’t as many historical fiction stories about the Spanish influenza as we might expect, and I am left wondering what stories writers and artists will tell about COVID.
References
Kerr, K. (2002). Unity (1918). Talonbooks.
