Donning a pair of tights and a tattered copy of
King Lear might not sound like the most clear-headed response to a swine flu pandemic decimating the population, but hey, after a year like 2020, are we really the ones to judge? It s impossible not to feel a kinship with the characters of Emily St. John Mandel s
Station Eleven, a book repeatedly deemed prescient for its depiction of a pandemic-ravaged earth in which a troupe of actors attempt to discover and create a sense of meaning in the wake of endless death
. Now that the acclaimed 2014 novel is headed for an HBO Max adaptation, we’ll finally see the Shakespearean thespians explore the post-apocalypse on the screen. But what most fascinating about this particular project is how it was forced to adapt during our world s own (very real) lockdown.