‘What If the Thing You’re Waiting for Never Arrives?’

During the first year of the pandemic, we at least had something to wait for: Effective vaccines were the gift that would theoretically deliver us back to normalcy. But the vaccines arrived, and the pandemic is still very much here. Many countries don’t have the doses that their residents need, and even the nations with wide availability, such as the U.S. and the U.K., haven’t reached a vaccination level that has stifled transmission of the coronavirus. Sure, some important milestones are ahead—vaccine authorization for young kids, a sustained nationwide lifting of restrictions, the expansion of vaccine access around the globe—but we are now in a fuzzier state of biding our time, one that lacks a clear endpoint.

Postwar avant-garde theater is not the first place most people will turn to for wisdom in this time of uncertainty and impatience, but perhaps something like solace can.