Is there a stage for virtual theatre?
Set to premiere the week after spring break, the play I’d been working on all semester halted production indefinitely. Then my anticipated summer highlight, Taylor Swift’s Lover Fest, was scrapped. When RuPaul’s DragCon LA was cancelled, I was devastated. I don’t even watch drag.
I was relieved when the leadership team decided to make CTC’s summer intensive virtual instead of calling it off. My assistant directing internship plans with CTC had endured through a summer of postponed primaries and scrapped travel plans. By the time July rolled around, I needed hope.
Looking back, if anyone could devise a musical to be filmed at each actor’s home, it was our creative team. On day one, the students were introduced to Peter Brosius, a clown lover and director with a gripping anecdote to accompany every instruction, Linda “Tally” Talcott Lee, a choreographer who calls herself a “movement enthusiast and inspirer,” and Victor Zupanc, a Canadian baseball fan who has an in-home music studio fit for any ’80s rock band. There were some pretty awesome interns, too.
Our musical follows a cast of Urinetown whose show gets shut down by law enforcement on opening night. Determined to perform, a new creative team emerges and writes an original play. We never find out what that play is about. Instead, we watch as leadership becomes tyrannical and the cast confess their overwhelming loneliness through songs like “I’m So Much More Than You See” and “Everything Smells Like Cloth.” It’s aptly named COVIDtown the Musical.
I’ve learned a lot. After five weeks of working alongside a talented team and 19 budding actors, I’m beginning to appreciate Zoom theatre.
But 15-year-old Clea Gaitas was enthusiastic from the start.
“At the time my family and I found out our production would be virtual, I was so desperate to do any sort of theatre that I had no expectations coming in,” she said. “Once the creative team developed the plot and told us what it was about, I got really excited because it seemed like a super fun thing to write and create — and it was.”
Clea’s high school production of Chicago had been cancelled after only four weeks of rehearsal. She’d been cast as a Jazz Age dancer and ensemblist. So, daily morning dancing and stretching at the start of our rehearsals filled a void. Even recording and re-recording scenes provided comfort.
“I’m quite a perfectionist, so I loved the process of getting nit-picky with details and working on small details in the show, even though most people [found] it tedious.”
For 13-year-old Henry Grooms, taking part in virtual theatre had added significance. Set to start his first year of high school online in the fall, he worried about missing his friends and lacking routine.
“I definitely had really good days and really bad days,” he said. “I think what has helped me is knowing that I have something at the same time every day and it’s not going to be unexpected or changing.”
I think I speak on behalf of everyone when I say: as much as we felt hope and stability from the rehearsal process, we felt challenged.
Logan Warner, 13, who had just wrapped up a production of Frozen Jr. before joining the cast of COVIDtown, emphasized that he thrives off of his interactions with other thespians. Unlike his previous in-person experiences, COVIDtown required the cast to split into small groups to write and record scenes, “making the process of building a character and writing a script harder.”
Assistant stage manager Elie Simon, a rising senior at Millikin University, agreed.
“One of the biggest jobs of a stage manager is looking around and seeing what everyone is doing,” she said. “You need to know where your actors are. Are they tired? Are they sick? That’s a lot harder on Zoom.”
This year has weighed down on all of us. Beyond whatever our final product may look like, the intimacy and consistency of full cast rehearsal, as noted by Clea and Henry, shaped our virtual theatre experience. The show has been a source of hope for myself and other production members, such as 15-year-old Symphonie Whitted.
Symphonie stepped into her role as Abby, a self-obsessed assistant choreographer with optimism. She shared that the lighthearted nature of the show put her at ease during a troubling time. But she’s learned that virtual theatre isn’t her calling.
“The essence of theatre is a shared experience with other people,” she said. “The contact, the closeness, everything. Taking that way is taking away the most important part of theatre. As soon as we’re able, I’d love to jump back into normal theatre the way things were.”
My co-assistant director Lulu Guzmán put it best: “Is [virtual theatre] my preferred medium of storytelling? No. I miss people in real life. But I do think it’s possible, and we should make space for it. It opens up our eyes to questions about accessibility in theatre in terms of who we’re able to reach, who it includes and doesn’t include.”
I’m finding my place in theatre. This internship has pushed me to take more theatre classes that rely less on physical space, like playwriting, and even change my major to give me more time to be creative.
As theatre-makers, we’ve had to navigate how to harness our creativity to make work amid Broadway furloughs and cancelled shows. But I’m confident we’ll be able to adapt (and already are). We are makers and innovators.
I’m excited to watch the virtual stage enter the spotlight.
— Article by Jacob Cramer, CTC Summer Intensive Assistant Director
You can watch COVIDtown the Musical for free at childrenstheatre.org/studentvoices now!