February 16-February 23, 2021
Vol. 117 NO. 6
Theatre department’s Short Works Festival moves online Max Hughes Staff Reporter
T
he theatre department’s fifth annual Short Works Festival went online this year, a decision made after the overall available time for those involved to work on the project in-person shrunk down. Kathryn Stahl, faculty mentor for the Short Works Festival, said, “We planned for this to be in person, however, with the requirement to have the first two weeks online … and some miscommunications in CWU’s [COVID-19] testing release back-to-classes date we made the decision that with only a week and a half until tech it would be easier, it would be much more safe, to move it online with so many unknowns about student test results.” Students make up the majority of the project’s talent and team. “So, the Short Works Festival is a series of student-written, student-acted, student directed plays that is produced at [CWU],” Stahl said. Michael Galvin, a theatre major, acted in two of the show’s pieces. He said acting at one camera is different from acting outwards at an audience.
Open Broadcaster Software (OBS), a program used for streaming and recording, played a big part in this year’s production. Stahl said, “One of our alum from here, Megan Hicks, had directed a show using OBS and had incorporated scenic elements through background pictures … so I had seen her production and said, ‘Oh my gosh, we could totally do that with Short Works.’” The production used backgrounds behind the characters to establish things that would normally be established on stage in other ways. Stahl said a rainbow backdrop was used to show when a scene moved out of reality, something that traditionally may have been shown with different lighting on stage. Galvin said, “It’s a lot of adaptation. You have to be adaptable, you have to be flexible. There are some things that would have been really cool to be in person, but there are also some things that worked better doing things online, just logistically speaking.”
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Photo by Max Hughes/The Observer
The Porch navigates open-air seating rules under Inslee’s Recovery plan Libby Williams Staff Reporter Restaurant owners have juggled staying afloat and following rules within the phases of Gov. Jay Inslee’s Roadmap to Recovery. The Porch Bar and Grill has the tools necessary to remain open with multiple large garage doors for ventilation, but whether or not every rule is being followed was a gray area.
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Co-owner of The Porch Ashley Arnes said readapting multiple times over the last year has been a struggle, especially when indoor dining was completely prohibited and carryout was the only option. “The second shutdown started, and we decided we would try opening all our garage doors, having an open air concept, which was our interpretation of essentially outdoor seating,” Arnes said. “We got to roll with that for maybe two or three weeks, and we got a
visit from the liquor control board because they were working in conjunction with [Washington State Department of Labor and Industries].” The Porch was once again forced to only offer outdoor seating. A staff member at The Porch, who requested to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal at work, said the garage doors haven’t been completely open since the start of the new mandate. They said at the beginning of the day,
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the doors would be open about six feet off the ground. But customers were complaining about the cold, so owners would close them. “[Customers were] kind of just taking for granted that they were inside a restaurant, not sitting outside in the snow,” the staff member said. Besides customers not acknowledging the risk, the staff member said other
See The Porch, Page 4 Page 12 COVID-19 case cancels game