Reported By: Jacques Masangkay
The pandemic was the reason for the cancellation of numerous things in the world. Many of which were probably a decent part of our everyday lives. As students, the transition to remote learning threw a wrench in a handful of extracurricular activities such as the theatre. Known for hosting live plays, theatre students had to get creative in their approach to productions.
UOG theater productions had to be released online in the form of radio plays and recorded on-stage plays. However, with things slowly going back to normal and as UOG transitions back to face-to-face, the theater program plans on doing a live production.
“It is the first theatre play back with a live audience, but there was a live music concert last week” Troy McVey explained.
The play in the works is the “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee”, a musical written by William Finn and Rachel Sheinkin. Auditions for the play were held on March 15 and 16, and the production is scheduled to hold performances from April 21 to 30 on weekdays.
Due to the long absence of live productions, students have since faced certain challenges. Experience was the biggest challenge, there is a lot of rust to shake off and new blood to show the ropes. Habits that were normal before the pandemic have been somewhat forgotten, or at the very least became less part of the routine.
“We’ve all forgotten how to do a show. Everyone’s kinda coming at this with freshman level expertise, and they’re sort of related to that because of the pandemic. People just aren’t in the habit of going out and working like we used to. The pandemic’s been great because we have all these different ways of working with each other that we never did before.” McVey said. “But no, we need to be here, we need to be in person. It’s the basic things like setting up rehearsals, traditions, and routines- we don’t really have any of that.”
The hard work of the theater program also would not have been possible without the help of the SGA, that grants the program the funding they need to do productions like this. According to McVey, it was the SGA that encouraged them to return to live, in person events and that they are quite supportive of the theater’s works.
