Alive, Unwell, and Defending Each Other

In mid-December, amidst the reliably annual holiday COVID surge, I had the gift of seeing theatre in a crowded room in New York City and still feeling safe because the audience was fully masked. The theatre was not maintaining mask-required performances for all productions, but choosing to protect each other by wearing masks was required by the show itself.

I was seeing Dan Fishback is Alive, Unwell, and Living in His Apartment, a non-narrative rock musical written and composed by Dan Fishback, at Joe’s Pub. Dan is a chronically ill playwright, musician, and actor. He has Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS). ME/CFS is characterized by severe fatigue and symptoms that worsen after physical or cognitive exertion, also known as post-exertional malaise (PEM). If you have followed the news about long COVID in recent years, these may be terms you’re familiar with—PEM is one of the primary symptoms that people with long COVID experience. However, Dan was already navigating ME/CFS before 2020. Things that may take very minimal effort for someone without the illness can leave those afflicted with severe pain and fatigue, unable to get out of bed for days on end. As Dan writes in the song “Punished”:

If I try to dip in the nightlife
Punished
… Asserting my independence 
Punished
Talking to a friend in her backyard
Punished
Concentrating too much on a sentence
Punished
Fucking too hard

As you can imagine, if concentrating too much on a sentence can produce these symptoms, then performing can lead to huge crashes. After pushing himself to perform in 2018, Dan spent most of the following year in bed. Even before the pandemic forced many to isolate, he had to isolate himself.

When the majority of people don’t care about mitigating a deadly virus, then those who will be most impacted have to take on an overwhelming burden.

Although Dan was the writer, composer, and titular character of the show, it was not actually Dan performing on that afternoon at Joe’s Pub. At least not Dan’s physical body. The show starts with an “esoteric kabbalistic ritual to summon a living spirit onto the stage.” Chaotic rock noise plays, and performer Ron Shalom’s body shakes as the company summons Dan’s spirit to rise up into the Brooklyn sky, cross the East River, and settle into Ron’s body. Open captions and live audio description provide audience members with a detailed, descriptive narrative of this ritual as it happens which definitely enhanced the magic. For the rest of the show, Ron is a vessel for Dan to sing, speak, and play his lament. I certainly believed the ritual—when Dan and I hopped on a Zoom call a few days later to talk about the show, I felt like I had already spent an afternoon with him.

The Genesis of the Show

At the start of the COVID pandemic, Dan had already been thinking about his relationship to performing. He spent years trying new ways to navigate his illness. He developed the Helix Queer Performance Network, which provides performance opportunities for many other queer artists and gave him an opportunity to support behind the scenes. But he feared he was being forgotten as a performer, so he pushed himself in 2018, resulting in the aforementioned crash. He started to accept his life on stage might be over and began to ideate a revue to showcase a backlog of unshared songs. Then the pandemic began. Live theatre halted. Theatremakers began thinking through questions he had already been navigating about producing and performing theatre safely. Nobody knew where the theatre field, or the world, was going next. “The future seemed so open-ended,” Dan told me. “Anything or nothing could happen.”

This was when the seeds of Dan Fishback is Alive… were really planted. He had material that he couldn’t perform himself, and also didn’t have the resources to compensate other performers. He reached out to Alex Knowlton, the director of Joe’s Pub, with an email that read something like “I don’t know if theatre will ever exist again. But if it does, I would love to create a theatrical container for my songs that other people can perform.” It was definitely not like a grant application, Dan said. The email was long and emotional, and he didn’t expect Alex to get to it ever, really. But Alex did respond, and the two began to make it happen.

Joe’s Pub offered Dan the New York Voices commission—a tremendous assistance, but Dan knew he would need more than the grant. Luckily, the Public Theater development department was kind enough to submit him for the New York State Council on the Arts grant. Dan also reached out to Steven Tartick, co-founder of theatrical producing venture the Season. They signed on to produce. Artistic development was underway.

As the project shifted, so did the world. Despite the ongoing COVID pandemic, people and organizations dropped mitigations like mask mandates and virtual access options. Dan and millions of immunocompromised people were abandoned. “My perspective on everything pretty much changed. I began to walk through life with a profound sense of betrayal,” he said.

This time informed the musical’s opening song, “I Don’t Live In New York”:
 

Americans are going back in public again!
They’re hanging out and blowing raspberries onto their friends!
And they don’t have to wear a mask in a subway or a hospital or theater!
(Cause they feel unfilted air smells sweeter!)/
“Let’s get COVID three times a year, and fuck long COVID, fuck fear. We’ll just find out what happens!”
 

During the musical, the song is accompanied with an illustration of Dan perched in his bed, gazing out at the city through his window, unable to join the revelry.

So much of Dan’s life was about COVID out of necessity—when the majority of people don’t care about mitigating a deadly virus, then those who will be most impacted have to take on an overwhelming burden. Songs he had written about the life he had before the pandemic felt like lying. He decided “to write new material that acknowledges this reality… about this historical moment.”

Integrated Access

While developing new material, Dan saw Dark Disabled Stories by Ryan J. Haddad at the Public Theater in March 2023. Seeing this show was a “cultural reset.” He could safely attend because the room “had prepared for me and considered me… I felt welcomed and loved in that room.” The access provided by that show was co-created by Alison Kopit, who served as the access dramaturg. Access dramaturgy means approaching access as though it is not an add-on to the show, but baked into the show itself. Access dramaturgs use an “integrated access” model, in which access and disability are central to the meaning-making of the show. Seeing Dark Disabled Stories inspired Dan to reach out to Alison, who became a primary collaborator in the early days of imagining Dan Fishback is Alive... Dan learned so much from Alison. One key thing she shared is that when it comes to best practices for integrated access, there aren’t any. Access needs are specific and often conflict, so you have to be responsive. You cannot simply make a list that every show can replicate.

The development of Dan Fishback is Alive… continued with the goal of keeping accessibility at the forefront.

From the start, Dan knew his show would need to require masks and that this would mean suspending drink and food service in Joe’s Pub. Alex figured it out—as long as the show was earlier in the day and didn’t conflict with the restaurant contract, that would be fine. “That part was actually not a struggle,” Dan told me. “I want artists to know that. I want theatres to know that… This doesn’t have to be hard.”

A mask requirement for audiences is a huge win for COVID safety, but only provides that safety for the performances. It was important to keep artists and crew safe throughout the rehearsal process too. 

But everyone cared, and everyone got it.

For rehearsals, Dan requested a Pluslife device. Pluslife is a Nucleic Acid Amplification Test (NAAT), which is much more likely to detect COVID than rapid antigen tests. He had two devices that he could bring, but it takes thirty-five minutes to process a test. The Public Theater bought one and paid for the tests, which are $7 each. Every single day of their workshop in December, each person in their company of seventeen tested, and there was never any pushback.

That was one of many actions the Public took to increase access. There was also a “bubble” within the theatre with spaces designated as mask-required. All of the Public Theater and Joe’s Pub staff received a COVID protocol document. A chaperone sat outside of their rehearsal space to ensure that no one entered unmasked. The Public supplied kn95 masks to company members and audience members who didn’t have their own. Everyone on staff adhered to the protocols. Dan noted that it was so much easier than one might assume, given conversations that he and other artists have had with venues that claim to be incapable of meeting these access needs. But everyone cared, and everyone got it.

“Joe’s Pub is one of the most significant music venues in New York City,” and so their willingness to do all of this meant a lot to Dan. The Public also met a multiplicity of access needs that have nothing to do with COVID safety. They offered two television monitors so the company could experiment with and establish a monitoring system for the Deaf performers to see the text of the show, as each song was also performed via American Sign Language. There was even a company member who was sensitive to the flickering of the lights in the rehearsal room, so Joe’s Pub provided ten floor lamps to enable that company member to participate.

Thanks to the integrated access approach, Dan got to try out new accommodations as well. Because the symptoms of ME/CFS are cumulative, Dan knew that by the end of the rehearsal period, he would be physically suffering. So he had a bed in the rehearsal room. Since the show was primarily musical, he laid on the bed with his head down and commented on how things sounded without having to exert the energy to sit up and look. This was Alison’s suggestion, and it was “completely revelatory” for Dan.

Another COVID precaution that has been largely abandoned is virtual access for audiences. Virtual access was provided via a livestream that was filmed by three cameras and live cut, expanding the audience to people throughout the world. People outside of North America who have largely been homebound for years messaged Dan about how the show impacted them. “It has been tremendously rewarding to be able to reach those people,” he told me. This response from people who have largely been shut out of live theatre served as a proof of concept of the show. Immunocompromised people exist. And they want to see themselves reflected in stories too.

Covid Denialism and the Genocide in Palestine

When the show started, I noticed that bassist Jamilah Sandoto wore her locs under a keffiyeh. This act of solidarity with Palestine was already significant to me, as I know that a performer donning a keffiyeh has sparked controversy elsewhere. At that point, I didn’t know that the entire back half of Dan Fishback is Alive… has songs relating to the genocide in Palestine and the latest intense bombardment that began in October 2023.

Dan wrote about feeling distanced from his friends who weren’t acknowledging what was going on in Palestine, saying “I know that I have friends / Who celebrated Halloween during a genocide” in the song “Halloween Parade.” In “Diminished,” he goes on to share how hard it is to grapple with the enormity of the death:

It’s too big, the number—it won’t fit in my head.
I can’t press it in, this many thousand dead.
In my name no less, what a disgrace,
Murderous versions of my own face.

After performing this song, Ron as Dan says

How you doing out there, Joe’s Pub? But I already know, honey. You feel like shit. It’s December 2024, we all feel like shit. Actually, yeah, if you haven’t felt like shit for most of the past decade, or at LEAST since last fall, get the fuck out of my show!

I’m used to curtain speeches/direct addresses to the audience that encourage donations, all while delivered in a cheerful tone. This was the first theatrical audience I can remember being in since 2020 where a performer spoke to us and acknowledged that terrible things are happening, and it is right to feel bad because of it.

I was struck by the fact that the first live theatrical show I’ve seen that talks about the ongoing COVID pandemic is also the first one I’ve seen by non-Palestinian creators that talks about the genocide. Although surprising, this connection made total sense to me and was further illuminated in my conversation with Dan. 

Dan has dedicated much of his life to anti-Zionist Jewish organizing spaces. He had even previously had a show canceled due to his anti-Zionist politics. When the latest war began, he went into a stage of emergency and panic. His body, he told me, felt like it was on fire every day. He had a residency scheduled around that time, and he relied on some of the first composition tools he ever learned from Deb Margolin of Split Britches: If you are obsessed with two things at the same time, there’s always an overlap no matter how dissimilar they may seem.

Once he reflected, the overlap became very clear. In the case of both COVID denialism and the United States-funded genocide in Palestine, “our leaders, our government, our society at large are working around the clock to try and convince us that everything is okay.”

“It’s galling enough to see our leaders do this,” he shared. “But it’s a personality altering betrayal to see so many people around you get in line with the program.” The resulting feeling is alienation, which Dan Fishback is Alive… explores alongside themes of “insisting upon your truth and… insisting upon endurance.” That idea guided him as the show and score congealed.

I found the marrying of these topics to be incredibly effective. In the penultimate song of the piece, he writes

Never in a hundred years
Did I think you wouldn’t be with the people screaming
Never in two thousand years
Did I think you could see this death and not see what I’m seeing.

In context, this is about people ignoring genocide. But it could also apply to the people ignoring the COVID pandemic, which has already killed over thirteen thousand people in the United States since the start of 2025 (and this number is likely an undercount given limited testing and reporting).

The similarities between the genocide in Palestine and the ongoing denial of COVID which were already clear to many of us, were brilliantly spotlit in the musical.

Dan Fishback is Alive, Unwell, and Living in His Apartment exemplifies theatre that takes precautions to keep artists and audiences safe while also commenting on the many ways people are being harmed throughout the world by the United States government.

Fighting Ableism Is Fighting Fascism

This essay serves as documentation of what is possible. Dan Fishback is Alive… sold out in advance, and many hundreds of people got to watch virtually. You can have a show with mask requirements and still be successful. You can have a rehearsal process that increases access, works to keep people safer, and culminates in a wonderful show. You can utilize integrated access to welcome more people to experience your show and enhance the craft of the piece. And if you want, you can do this all via evocative rock numbers.

This show and our conversation took place in the last full month of the Biden presidency. Now that Trump has taken office and we have seen some of the actions he is taking, our conversation feels even more relevant.

When Dan and I talked about theatres that continue to resist COVID precautions, he shared, “Fascism doesn’t exist without ableism and never has.” Many theatres don’t require masks because they fear audience pushback and potential violence towards box office staff. Dan said,

If an attendee at a box office says “Fuck you, I’m not gonna wear this mask. This is bullshit,” as far as I'm concerned, that person is a fascist. They are intimating violence or aggression in order to maintain their supremacy over an oppressed class of people.

In response to the Trump presidency, many people have shared the quote “Do not obey in advance.” If we capitulate now by refusing to provide protections for immunocompromised and disabled people for fear of violence, we will capitulate again and again. We are shutting out so many people by refusing to protect them, but it won’t stop there. “Chopping off parts of the community to make things easier is a losing game,” Dan said.

Dan Fishback is Alive, Unwell, and Living in His Apartment exemplifies theatre that takes precautions to keep artists and audiences safe while also commenting on the many ways people are being harmed throughout the world by the United States government, with implicit or explicit support of many United States citizens. I was so inspired by Dan’s commitment to spotlighting these issues that many choose to ignore. I was in awe of the commitment he, the company, and the Joe’s Pub and Public Theater staff made to embedding the ethos of the show in its creation. Theatremakers across the United States are wondering how our field should be resisting and lessening the impacts of the Trump administration. Acknowledging the ongoing COVID pandemic and including precautions is an essential piece of the puzzle. We have to care for each other. As Dan shared with me, “Everyone in culture needs to get accustomed to standing up for the most defenseless among us. These are muscles we need to build. Our capacity to defend each other needs to grow.”