{"id":33465,"date":"2020-10-13T14:20:47","date_gmt":"2020-10-13T18:20:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogarchive.utc.edu\/news\/?p=33465"},"modified":"2020-12-02T09:48:13","modified_gmt":"2020-12-02T14:48:13","slug":"artists-will-always-find-a-way-despite-pandemic-the-show-goes-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogarchive.utc.edu\/news\/2020\/10\/artists-will-always-find-a-way-despite-pandemic-the-show-goes-on\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Artists will always find a way\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Bald Soprano, Saturday, September 19, 2020 at Chamberlain Pavilion.<\/p><\/div>\n

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UTC Theatre Company\u2019s next show is a 2020 take on the classic Greek play Antigone <\/em>coming later this fall.<\/em><\/p>\n

The show will be pre-recorded by actors in their homes and streamed like a Zoom meeting with everyone participating from their own virtual squares.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Members of UTC Theatre Company did not let Covid-19 stop them from producing their first show this season. Instead, they broke some theater rules, kept the ensemble(s) safe and learned a lot along the way.<\/p>\n

On Sept. 19 and 20, the company performed The Bald Soprano,<\/em> an absurdist satire that takes place in a middle-class English home.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always found the absurdists\u2014and the philosophers who kind of gave birth to them\u2014I\u2019ve found their work brutal but not hopeless,\u201d explained Steve Ray, director and associate head of the Department of Performing Arts-Theatre Division.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like, there\u2019s chaos in the world, how do we connect the dots? And I kind of felt like this year that\u2019s where we were living and I wanted to give the students a chance to express that, to feel around in those areas of: What does it mean to live in an uncertain time?\u201d<\/p>\n

The company was resourceful, using many techniques to keep cast, crew and audience safe. All cast members wore masks throughout the play and maintained physical distance on stage. Because the cast was masked, their parts were voiced by actors who stood behind Plexiglas partitions. Just two actors\u2014one male and one female\u2014voiced all the parts.<\/p>\n

The production took place outside on Chamberlain Field with a limited, socially distanced audience.<\/p>\n

The show had two separate casts. If members of one cast had to go into quarantine or isolation, there was a whole other cast ready to fill their shoes. The members of the two casts had to stay away from one another and within their own cast bubble for the two-and-half weeks of rehearsal leading up to the show.<\/p>\n

Everyone sanitized their rehearsal space before the next cast came in to rehearse. Luckily, both casts got to perform the production with a Saturday and a Sunday cast for the weekend of the show.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am so proud of all of our students. All of our students at UTC but, of course, I come in contact more with the theater students, and they have done a fantastic job,\u201d Ray said.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom Day One we said, \u2018You\u2019ve got to wear your mask; you\u2019ve got to stay six feet apart; and you\u2018ve got to disinfect things,\u2019 and they have just been the model of responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n

For sophomore theater major Sadie Collins that responsibility and the extra steps the cast took just became the \u201cnew normal.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t as hard as I thought it was going to be,\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t a burden or a challenge necessarily, it was just the new normal. You know there\u2019s a lot of responsibility. If one person in your cast gets COVID, you\u2019re all out. We all trusted each other and knew that we weren\u2019t going to be going out to parties or be irresponsible like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Collins, female voice actor for The Bald Soprano\u2019s <\/em>Saturday cast, had never solely voice acted before. She also was performing parts in three distinct British accents with no prior accent training.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy accent training consists of watching Harry Potter for my whole life. Before every line, I would have to switch into a different voice, a different accent that\u2019s not my own native accent and make three different voices from them. Even knowing that I had that in my own arsenal, that I could pull that up, was a surprise for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

While voice acting was new territory for Collins, acting without dialogue was completely new for her castmates, too.<\/p>\n

D\u2019Andre Anderson, a senior majoring in theater, described his performance as Mr. Martin in the Saturday cast as something akin to human puppeteering.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I first started the rehearsal process, it was really hard. Because I realized I rely so much on the delivery of my voice and how I said the lines,\u201d Anderson said.<\/p>\n

But things got better. He, the other actors on stage and the voice actors grew in sync with one another and \u201cfelt each other\u2019s energy,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe voice actor was on his own wavelength; I was on my own wavelength but, for some weird reason, we were able to continue to fall in pattern with each other, and I thought that was so cool.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anderson described the production as \u201creally innovative and creative.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt just showed that artists will always find a way to make it happen, no matter if we\u2019re in the middle of a pandemic or not.\u201d<\/p>\n