Then, on March 29, The Alley Theatre announced it was canceling the rest of its run of Derek Walcott’s Odyssey, a retelling of Homer’s epic poem set on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia. The play had just begun previews the Friday before, and a media event for the show originally scheduled for March 29 had been pushed back to March 31, according to the Houston Press.

According to the Alley’s statement, the scope of production for Odyssey was ultimately too much to take on. “We knew going into this production the scope was difficult, and we thought it was appropriately resourced,” artistic director Rob Melrose said in the statement. “Despite our best intentions and efforts, we are canceling The Odyssey because it is impossible to bring this production to completion.”

In an interview with Chron the week before Odyssey opened, the play’s cast and crew talked about the challenges of bringing the epic poem, which consists of 24 books and more than 12,000 words, to the stage. “He got it down to play size, performed in just one evening,” Melrose said of playwright Walcott. “But every event of the poem is in the play. So it’s a really compact way to experience The Odyssey.”

Shawn Hamilton, who was set to play the Greek chorus-like singer “Blind” Billy Blue in the production, also talked about the play’s scope. “With something epic like this, you think, ‘Oh, the budget’s huge and we’re going to have a big ship and we’re going to have a thousand suitors come in for the big fight,’” he said. “We don’t have that. But I have to think that Derek would be so thrilled because for him, he always just wanted the words to be center stage.” Nevertheless, even a more minimalist take on the show apparently posed insurmountable obstacles for the production.

In the cancellation statement, the Alley noted that all tickets for subsequent performances would be refunded.

For the crew at Catastrophic, meanwhile, there was no debate as to whether they would try to continue the production of Cleansed, or postpone it to a later date. The play takes place “in an institution designed to rid society of its undesirables” and first debuted in 1998 at the Royal Court Theatre Downstairs in London. It was to be the latest in a long line of emotionally challenging and provocative performances for Catastrophic Theatre, whose tagline is “We will destroy you.”

Catastrophic co-director Jason Nodler told Chron that he and his partner, T Lavois Thiebaud, had spent the past week cleaning out Mustafa’s home.

“Cleansed is a fable that asks, ‘Can love survive the most unfathomable obstacles?'” the co-directors wrote in a statement to Chron. “It places extreme emotional demands on all involved and requires tremendous vulnerability and trust, so it was not a matter of replacing a single cast member. It was a matter of building that trust all over again and to do so now might have required replacing most of the cast as well as its directors. No number of resources could have made the play emotionally safe to perform at this time.”

“(Playwright) Kane wrote that the only response to a cruel world is to live ‘with as much humanity’ as we possibly can. Humanity now demands we take pause for remembrance and grief as we love one another toward healing,” the statement continued. “Even if this play is never experienced by a public audience, we and many of our cast consider it the most important artistic endeavor of our careers, but to have continued with it so soon after this loss would have been an affront to Zachariah’s memory, to the love and trust this brave cast brought to the work, and a betrayal of the play itself.”

A memorial service honoring the life of Mustafa will take place from 1-4 p.ml. April 8 at MATCH Box 3, the theater where he was to have made his professional stage debut.

Beyond these cancellations, the past few years have been difficult for much of Houston’s theater community, mainly due to the COVID-19 pandemic. With stay-at-home orders in effect in Harris County through much of 2020 and social distancing practices continuing into 2021 and 2022, Catastrophic turned towards for-hire performances in the backyards and driveways of patrons. The theater company’s 2021-22 season was also delayed due to the ongoing pandemic. Catastrophic’s first in-theater performance after COVID-19 closures ended was another Sarah Kane play, 4.48 Psychosis.

For the Alley, COVID came after the theater suffered significant flood damage in Hurricane Harvey in 2017. The iconic Brutalist-style building, constructed in 1949, had just undergone $46.5 million in renovations in 2015, and was closed for more than three months after the storm. It suffered an estimated $18 million in damage.

A message to the Alley requesting additional comment on the closure of Odyssey and its effects on the theater was not returned as of press time.