Theatre Students Keep the Stage Alive Online
Words by Diego Areas Munhoz
Cover photo by Adrien Olichon from Pexels
Last spring, Emily Kuper, a senior theatre student at City College, could not accept the play she helped produce would not have a live audience. She had trouble believing that while her classes were still going on, the college administration would not let anyone see the play she had worked on for weeks. “I did not take COVID for an answer,” says Kuper, who assisted in directing the play. “I also did not know the magnitude of this pandemic.”
By the end of that month other plays suffered similar fates. By the end of March, City College’s production House of Spirits had moved online. Every production for the Fall of 2020, along with dozens across the world transitioned to Zoom and other video conference software. As the pandemic endures, how long will it take for live theatre to come back?
According to Broadway League, Broadway theaters will be closed through at least May 30, 2021. The Metropolitan Opera canceled its 2020-2021 season and hopes to come back only in the fall of next year. Not able to go see a play in person, audiences now watch Zoom-theatre.
According to Rob Barron, the chair of the City College Theatre Department, the school was ready to move classes online when the pandemic hit the city. “It was not a question of if but of when,” says Barron. “So, we tried to prepare everybody.”
In April, Kuper received an endorsement by the department to direct her own play, a production of Jean Paul Sartre’s “No Exit” this semester. Even though she started rehearsals through Zoom, the whole crew hoped the play would be in-person in September. “We thought it was going to happen because we had been home for so long,” says Kuper. “But my professor told me, ‘our country does not have it together.’”
The pandemic not only affected theater in New York but in the whole country. Miranda Taylor, a theatre student at Gordon College in Massachusetts, worries about the uncertainty the pandemic brought. “I was really scared,” says Taylor. “I didn’t know what this would mean for me or my art.”
Barron says at first he felt anxious about the future of CCNY’s productions. “Taking the ability to produce art from an artist is like taking their oxygen away,” says Barron. But the department decided to give Zoom a chance and see if performances would be viable online. “Zoom changed our minds. It offers a brand-new opportunity.”
Eventually, both Kuper and Taylor’s productions transitioned to Zoom. And even though video theater lacks the atmosphere of a live performance, it does open new doors. “We had audience members from all over the world tune in to see us,” says Taylor, who played Molly in White Guy on the Bus by Bruce Graham. “I hope this paves ways for future performances to be more accessible for not just those who live near a theater.”
