Actor is optimistic about the future of live theater
From attending distanced costume fittings and doing remote musical direction to assembling players logging on from different locations who have never met, actors and theater workers like Leticia Duarte have spent the pandemic adapting their stagecraft. “It’s been amazing to see the resilience and determination to create art, no matter what,” said Duarte. “It’s a real testament to artists and innovation.” Initially she had doubts about remote acting and directing. “When it first hit, I spent three months doing nothing,” she said of the shock in pandemic’s early days when all live performance was suddenly suspended. “I heard about Zoom but was really resistant.” A year later she’s been in eight Zoom plays, booked several commercials and is currently on a film set. Whether acting at home with additional equipment, working with an ensemble remotely or in an audience-less space, filming for live and later streaming, each project comes with challenges and radically different technical and safety requirements. “One costumer left the stuff inside the space, and then the actors picked it up,” said Duarte. “Zoom rehearsals are bizarre and hard, but there are some benefits. Like you finally get to invite your aunt Lola who lives in Mexico to a performance.” Duarte comes from what she called a long line of theater. Her uncle is Rodrigo Duarte Clark, founder of El Teatro de la Esperienza, once located at the historic Women’s Building on 18th Street in the Mission District. “I was thrown onstage really young, I loved it. Who wouldn’t at age 5?” she said, though pursuing the actor’s craft wasn’t yet on her radar. “I come from a really working class family” she said of her California, Mexican-American heritage. “My mom was a lemon picker as a child.” Duarte set out to pursue teaching, and it was while studying English literature at University of California, Los Angeles that she encountered Shakespeare. “I had never seen a Shakespeare play at the time,” she said and didn’t initially take to him on the page. But when one of her instructors suggested experiencing Shakespeare live was the key to understanding it, she dove into the deep end of her department’s study abroad program. “It prompted me to study at Stratford-upon-Avon,” she said, referring to Shakespeare’s birth home.
