Theatre in the age of Corvid-19

For everyone the past few months has not been anything like what we had hoped for 2020 to be. 

As a Theatre Educator I had been busy as usual working on music concerts, theatrical productions,

teaching classes and supervising student projects when the world changed.

Our production of Stupid Fucking Bird was selected to go to the American College Theatre Festival
in Maryland

and our students came back a few weeks early in January to rehearse and make necessary
changes for the tour.

The Festival theatre was different than ours so a few set changes were needed and blocking modified.

After just a few short days of rehearsal the set was packed into a truck and the cast and crew were off.

The performance went well and all our students did a great job.

The truck with the set and costumes returned just a few days before classes began.

The experience was very positive to all the students involved and this gave a general  energy boost
to the department as the new semester was underway.

Even back at the start of the semester stories of this new Virus was popping up in the news.

Our first sign that things ahead were going to be different is that our first music event had
to be postponed because of bad weather.

It put a little bump in our plans but we moved on.

Our first play of the semester was Crimes of the Heart, it would be the third time we have done
it on the Mainstage and the students have also produced the play twice in the Black Box. 

It had been twenty years since our last production so it was not too fresh in most people's memory.

The production went well, the cast worked hard and seemed to enjoy working with each other.

My Stagecraft class, only 5 in number, worked hard to get the set done.

The set was a little late getting finished but all the students came together and pushed hard to get
it painted

and the last details done.

In the end it looked good and the performances went well.

As the weeks of the production went on the Virus was more prominent in the news and various
plans started to be discussed.

By the end of the production we were a week from spring break and it was clear something
was going to happen.

Each day the reports got more dire and plans changed, sometimes several times a day.

We had one last concert before the school and state shut down.

The last thing we did before the shutdown was the rescheduled cello/piano concert from February.

It was very good, almost bittersweet, as we all knew that the world was about to change for us all and we would not be back for a while.

.So here we are two months later.

We finished the semester with a hastily put together distance learning program and our plans
for moving forward are ever changing.

Our future production plans have changed several times and I bet that they will change
again before school resumes.

In the words of the old Chinese curse:

May you live in interesting times.

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