When the pandemic hit, I had seven tour dates left on a spoken word show and had just started a new part time job in Derby. My first day was the 26th March 2019 (you see where I am going with this) at 9am. I was in the office for my first shift, being taught the fire safety procedures, and at 12pm I was in my new bosses office who was telling me to go home and they would contact me in the morning, something unexpected was about to happen.
As I write this, I am sat on my lunch break at my new, new job, where I’ve been for just under a year and shamefully, I had to google lockdown dates as if I’d forgotten them, like they were unimportant. How the hell have two years past since this all happened?
As someone once wrote (OK it was me) “I am in events management, that is my label.” Events management was once named the 5th most stressful job, and the only time events management has been more stressful than it usually is, is when events stop all together. For so long I had defined myself by what I did (events and poetry) and without that I had no idea who I was or what I was supposed to be doing.
Like many in the industry, I lost all my events and performance work overnight, and was left with the prospect of performing to webcams in empty rooms for the foreseeable future. If I wanted to perform to empty rooms, I’d go back to Edinburgh Fringe. I was in various group chats and zoom sessions online discussing how long it could be until larger venues were fully allowed to reopen, and quite frankly it was terrifying.
The Derby Witness, one of the projects I am most proud of which came about because of lockdown sums it up the best: “I cried once, overwhelmed all of a sudden.”
The only good thing about any of this is accessibility, and the opportunity to perform, collaborate and network with people across the world and for artists and performers to have their work seen and shared by people which may not have been previously demographically possible. I have now performed at the Hollywood Fringe Festival… from my bedroom, Genre Fluid (my aforementioned solo show) won best solo show at Morecambe Fringe (I have never been to Morecambe).
It’s only as things begin to open up, we realise how much we took for granted, but we are not out of the woods yet. In Events management, we have a new task, to welcome back those who feel comfortable in our spaces, and to also cater and support those who are not quite ready to return. Both are equally as valid.
In poetry we face the same challenges, attendance at cultural events across the board is still low, which is why we are so grateful to anyone who spends their hard-earned wages on an in person, or streamed poetry performance, stand up gig, music night, theatre show or cinema trip and everything else in between. (I highly recommend a museum visit, especially one to one of the three fabulous museums in Derby, who just happen to be current my employer).
I think I have done 8 in person gigs since July 2021, (my unofficial return to the stage) and each time I have been reminded of just how wonderful it is to share a space with fellow human beings, to laugh, cry and everything else. To meet someone new, to hear a new poem, hear an audience reaction, or to simply share a pint or a snack after an event.
I didn’t miss late trains, rain, snow or Google Maps, I did miss people, events and exploring new spaces. At the end of each gig I’ve started saying “thank you for supporting live events” to members of the public in the audience in person or at home, long may this continue. I never realized how much performing meant to me until it was taken away.
Dan Webber will be at the Queer the Shelves LGBTQ Book Festival in Nottingham. Come along!
book events, dan webber, lgbtq, literary festival, nottingham, poet, queer the shelves
