How Micaela Taylor turned pandemic stillness into a creative explosion at the Wallis Annenberg Center.
By Micaela Taylor
This past Sunday, the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts (WACPA) invited us to the annual “Sound of Silence” series, a series of silent films and spoken word performances curated by artists and activists who have been affected by the pandemic, and are looking to raise awareness of the situation. Myself, and two other artist/activists on the program were to be in attendance for the first performance of the night. It was set to begin at 7:00 pm, but I waited until 7:15 pm before walking in to find my roommate Lisa and her friend Liz. Not only was my roommate an artist, she is also an activist.
I looked at my friends and I knew that we were going to have a great time. And then something happened. Within a few minutes, the WACPA staff began asking us to leave. They told us that in order for us to stay, we would have to provide them with a medical release from our employer, who is a hospital. This led to a rather large discussion with my roommate and friends about what constituted “medical release”. They told us that for all of us to be able to stay, we would have to go in and sign in at the desk of each of the four directors. Once we did so, they would give us our tickets, bring us to our seats, and put us in a private spot for the evening.
This would be a first for me. I have never been asked to leave a concert—at least not in my memory. I was in a good mood, excited, nervous and had a whole list of questions ready to ask. After some discussion, it became pretty clear that the hospital was in fact asking the WACPA to take the medical release of each of us out of consideration, because they claim that we are working on the front lines and are now working on site. However, they also told us that we could go to our seats, leave our