COVID-19 Experiences of Stage Performers: Narratives from Turkey

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the experiences of artistic performers in Turkey from a primarily interactionist theoretical stance and aims to explore how they have been affected by the COVID-19 crisis. The lockdown policies implemented in Turkey have had dire consequences for these performers, exposing them to a new social position of insecurity and uncertainty. They have suffered not only from a lack of economic resources but also of the social interaction that in prior circumstances provided them with the grounds upon which they construct and present their social self. The findings of the study show that the closures of performance spaces fractured the day-to-day routines that would normally provide them with a secure social self since they lacked the ground (the physical stage) through which they have physical interaction with others (their audiences). The narratives in the study demonstrate that not being able to be on-stage endangered the process of the social construction of the self as performers and that they sought new ways of reconstituting the performer-audience interaction in order to ease the negative effects of the pandemic conditions and to secure their selves.