Challenges in the theater department

By Leo Fotovich (lfotovi2@jccc.edu). Fotovich is a video producer for The Campus Ledger. This is his first semester at the college. His favorite part about covering a story is the editing and finalization. He spends most time watching movies and playing video games with friends.

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Coronavirus has made some major changes to JCCC with classes being moved online and some programs being completely cancelled altogether.  With that in mind, many people are wondering how the performing arts are doing, since it is imperative that you meet in person to be successful. I spoke with student Meg Weldon and artistic coordinator Scott Stackhouse for further details. 

(Stackhouse) “We moved to the underground garage out in front of the black box theatre and we just did a show called defying gravity by Jane Anderson which is about the challenger disaster which coincided crazily with the release of the Netflix special, we had no idea which Is kind of interesting how that happened. And then We ran it for 2 weekends, they were in rehearsal for about 5 weeks and then we ran it for about 2 weekends down there. We’re limited to gatherings of 30 people including performers so we can have up 19 people in the audience, spread out, most of the time the weather was beautiful and we created a small theatre down there.”

However, the transition has had a couple problems, as with any class or program during these times. 

(Weldon) “Given the circumstances now, we have to cope to social distancing and being very self-aware which is something that you don’t typically do when you’re acting you don’t want to be very self-aware the people in the audience the people around you, you just want to be in the moment in the scene and I think it’s been hard to stay present and stay doing the things we’ve been doing normally because none of us have really performed outside before which was also a big curveball given to us, so it was a big learning curve.”

One of the most interesting developments has been the transition from the CarlseCenter to the CarlseCenter parking garage. 

(Stackhouse) “We’ve just turned it into a big open air classroom it does have its challenges, if a bus drives by or a helicopters fly overhead that’s just part of the animal that we’re going to deal with in order to do what we wanted to do. It’s another way for us to kind of model the main idea which is when you have a challenge you figure out a way to overcome it, and maybe at the end of the day is to not do anything at the end of the day if we discovered you know what we can’t do this safely then we would have just shut down. But We didn’t want to just shut down at the start because then we’re not modeling the idea that when a problem comes up you go after it.”

Regardless of the challenges and changes, the theatre program is set for multiple new performances for this semester. They just recently finished Defying Gravity and their next show is due for November 5th through the 8th. If you have any free time you should check them out for their next performance. Reporting for the campus ledger, I’m Leo Fotovich.    

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