Our book was written during the COVID pandemic. As a result, it was natural to include a chapter on this topic. In line with the overall theme of our book, we highlight aspects close to the understanding and communication of risk. Topics included in more detail are the inherent danger of exponential growth and the need for adhering to the precautionary principle when faced with a new, possibly catastrophic and hence not yet widely understood, type of risk. The precautionary principle enables decision-makers to adopt measures when scientific evidence about an environmental or human health hazard is uncertain and the stakes are high. A question we address to some extent is whether this pandemic happened totally unexpectedly; was it a so-called Black Swan? We present evidence that it most certainly was not. We give examples of early warnings from scientific publications, highly visible presentations in the public domain as well as regulatory measures in force to absorb the consequences of a possible pandemic. In discussions around risk, numbers, especially large ones, and also units of measurement play an important role; we offer some guidance here.

This chapter provides a partner to Vivien Gardners examination of theatre-going in Chapter 4. It examines the social and economic context of wartime theatre production, considering the ways in which the conflict impacted on theatre and shaped what could and could not be performed. It covers the practicalities of theatre-making during the war considering the enlistment of actors, touring patterns, the repertory system, censorship, military tribunals, and air raids. It positions the war as a period of change, whether in terms of the growth of cinema, the increasing role of women, changing sexual mores, or changing audiences. It shows how managers responded to this change in order to keep their businesses afloat, for example with the introduction of twice-nightly performances. The chapter also emphasises the importance of understanding the value of ‘feel-good’ entertainment, and shows how the interweaving of ‘new drama’ and multi-mode, popular entertainment on the touring circuits was designed to satisfy audience demand. In highlighting the ways in which the constraints of war determined both the format and content of theatrical production this chapter provides an important framework through which to read subsequent chapters.

The central feature of Bert Bissell’s life was his deep-seated Methodist faith. Bissell went to the hills (always the hills for him) to renew contact with this faith rather than to discover it for the first time. Climbing mountains in search of God has a long history and Bissell’s dedication to it suggests we should not be too quick to construe ruralism or nature worship as a displacement of religion. Nevertheless, even in Bissell’s case, other elements than religion contributed to his ruralism, including strong physical and social impulses. Perhaps most important of all was the need to shore up his own sense of self in the face of a world moving rapidly away from his most cherished beliefs and values.

Nativism, racism, and sexism are leading characters in this chapter, as are the songs for and against them. The Ku Klux Klan leads the way in musical contemptibility, but there are others, such as the xenophobes of the Spanish Flu epidemic and the songwriting purveyors of the postwar “Red Scare” against peace activists, labor activists, Germans, and suspected Bolsheviks. The immigrant community is under siege in the atmosphere of “100% Americanism,” and their songs – in the Cantonese opera houses, on the German and Italian vaudeville stages, in the Yiddish musical theaters, and in the ethnic recording studios – aim to fight back. The Indigenous peoples of Alaska and the lower 48 continue to resist the eradication of their song heritage, and the Mexican corridistas continue to sing of their border-crossing struggles. On the vaudeville stage, Eva Tanguay shows her contempt for conservative gender expectations, while the as-yet-unknown composers Florence Price and Ruth Crawford lay the groundwork for their own emergence.

This chapter provides a historic survey of pandemic responses over the last 650 years from when the plague first became endemic in Europe after 1347. It will show how the role of the state – initially Italian city-states and then the British and other nation-states – changed radically in response. Superseding the appeal to divine intervention for help, governments became involved in protecting and controlling their citizens at the most minute level. Across Europe and elsewhere the full range of tools of pandemic control from surveillance, tracking, quarantine, border patrols and economic support for those unable to work have in fact existed for hundreds of years.

It will argue that it is commerce, trade and war that historically have enabled pandemics to spread – they are not random events, but substantially man-made occurrences. By 2020, we had, in our quest for ever-expanding global markets and trade, created the perfect breeding ground for a new pandemic disease to emerge as we increasingly disturbed the habitats of other species. And we had also provided it with the perfect conditions to spread with our increasingly connected world. COVID-19 was always a matter of ‘when’ not ‘if’.