Well 2020 the year of Covid-19 is finally over.
I had thought, hoped, that I could have caught up on my Blog posts but it never happened.
I couldn't get my mind on my Blog and funny stories of the past when there was this new uncertain crazy world flying all around us.
My brother-in-Law, who had been declining fast to the ravages of dementia, was one of the early victims of the virus.
It brought it too close to home.
After the school closed down in March it became a waiting period to see what the world would through at us next and I never seemed to get a solid grip on getting anything new done.
When school began again this fall it turned out that we had only one production to work on.
We recorded a stage reading of Voices of Freedom Summer—A Reflection on the Turbulent Summer of 1964 and it was streamed online.
My students set up eight music practice rooms for the filming.
Extra furniture was cleared out of the rooms and “Green Screen” material was attached to one wall.
A video camera, lights and a microphone were added to each room.
Each actor also had ear buds so that they could hear each other and be cued when to begin.
All the wires ran out to the hall were it was all recorded.
After a week of rehearsals and recording the sound and videos were mixed into the final product and posted online.
It was not live theatre but gave our students a good experience.
My stagecraft students worked on setting up the rooms and making changes as needed.
The biggest addition to the rooms was adding panels to deaden the sound.
Carpet scraps and blankets were attached to small flats and placed in the rooms.
A segment with all the performers wearing masks was recorded on the Mainstage and used at the beginning and end of the piece.
For much of the semester my students worked on small projects on the stage and in the shop.
We built a new rehearsal table, re-built another and cleaned the stage and shop several times times over.
At the end of the semester all classes went online and I had my students watch a variety of tech videos.
The spring semester is going to start with online classes and hopefully move to face-to-face meetings early in March.
This spring we are planning to do our Festival of Ten, XII.
I am not sure what format we will be doing the 10 ten-minute plays.
They will most likely be filmed with the current plan is to do some, if not all, on the stage with the actors wearing masks.
We will have to wait and see as things seem to change fast in these days of Covid-19.
It became clear to me early on in the pandemic that live theatre, with many people sitting close together in theatres would be one of the last things to reopen.
Let us all hope the vaccines work and we can get back to a more normal world.
