Opinion: Are you ready for some maskless theater?

May 27—For more than a year, the easiest and safest ways to avoid getting COVID-19 were to keep your distance from others, wear a mask and wash your hands frequently. For most people, that meant staying home and away from people outside your personal bubble.

Then the Centers for Disease Control announced two weeks ago that those who have been vaccinated could move more freely, gathering indoors and outdoors with other vaccinated people and resuming the lives most of us gave up early in 2020.

This is the moment we have been waiting for and why many (if not enough of us) got vaccinated. We wanted the chance to reengage with the world.

But it turns out I haven't found it so easy to just flip the switch and change my attitude and activities. The bandage has been ripped off but I'm still feeling the bruise. Some friends have echoed my concerns, while others have dismissed them. We all have to go at our own pace. I've been taking little steps and feel good each time.

After so many months of playing it safe, avoiding indoor activities and attending only a limited number of outdoor performances, I didn't feel ready to rush inside to my favorite restaurants, or, in my role as theater critic, to start attending indoor performances.

I had just gotten comfortable with the outdoor, socially distanced model. The thought of a theater filled with people, or navigating a crowded lobby as patrons wait to take their seats — once a routine part of my life and part of the excitement of live performances — suddenly seemed less appealing.

Before the new CDC guidance, I wondered what this would mean for my career. It's hard to review plays if you're afraid to sit inside the theater. (I always project the most negative possibilities in these private in-my-head conversations.)

I had just gotten myself to the point where I was willing to take what I considered a big step and venture into Florida Studio Theatre when it opens its summer season next weekend. Before the CDC changed its guidelines, the theater had planned to limit ticket sales to about 50 percent of capacity for its mainstage shows and 70 percent for its cabarets.

But when the safety guidance changed, so did the theater's plan. It is now selling all the seats available in its theater for the summer seasons. Even with pent-up demand from audiences the theater may not actually be able to sell them all, but the possibility is there. Masks will not be required, but in an e-mail to ticketholders the theater wrote, "You are more than welcome to, and are encouraged to, continue to wear a mask while on site at FST if it makes you feel more comfortable."

Anything to get people back in the routine.

I don't begrudge the theater for trying to welcome back as many people as possible. I wasn't there yet when the theater first revealed the change in advance of the opening of "Sophie Tucker: The Last of the Red Hot Mamas." I'm hoping my mind gets me there in time for the second mainstage show "Oh Lord, What a Night."

But over the last few days of writing this column and thinking about a wide variety of issues and how much faith I've supposedly put in the scientists battling COVID-19, my attitude has begun to shift.

I may not be ready to jump in the deep end today, but I'm getting ready to take the plunge.

I know I'm not alone. I've had conversations with many artistic and managing or executive directors over the last few weeks as they announced plans for the new seasons that will begin in the fall. Most said their patrons were eager to return and get back to "normal," but many believe the coming season might be a transitional one. They may put all available seats on sale, but they're not really expecting to sell them. That may not happen until 2022-23.

When I go back, I have a feeling I'll still be wearing a mask (I'm helping to take care of my 96-year-old father, which is the main reason I've been so cautious).

I also like the idea that my mask kept me from getting sick in the last year. I've been working from home and so far have opted not to return to my downtown Sarasota office, which has reopened on a voluntary basis. Masks have been required and the company is reevaluating its safety protocols in the wake of the CDC guidelines.

I'm still wearing masks at the grocery store. I've had three meals outdoors in the last month and enjoyed the luxury of being served and supporting favorite restaurants in person, as opposed to the occasional take-out meals.

While I can't imagine my life without being in my regular theater seats, I guess it just takes some of us more time to process the reality that we can live as we once did and feel safe.

Jay Handelman, arts editor and theater critic, has been an editor and writer at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune since 1984.

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