MILE SQUARE THEATRE

All the World’s a SCREEN

Mile Square Theatre gives new meaning to “The show must go on!”

By Tara Ryazansky

Photos courtesy of Mile Square Theatre

The lights have been dim, and the curtains closed for more than a year on Broadway and in local theaters across the country. Mile Square Theatre is gearing up to take to the stage again as herd immunity strengthens in Hoboken.

“Last March, we pivoted immediately to virtual platforms which was a huge learning curve,” says dance director Sarah Weber Gallo. “We had to familiarize ourselves with new technology very quickly. We didn’t miss a single day of instruction.” “We kept all of our teachers employed which we were really proud of,” says Annie McAdams, director of education. “We were fortunate in that the PPP loans allowed us to do that.” A “precarious existence” is how she describes the artist’s life.

Mile Square maintained some normalcy by continuing their programs.

“All of the students have done a great job, but they crave social interaction,” Weber Gallo says. “We’ve had to adjust our teaching to allow for a little more vocalization or conversation than we would normally allow in a dance class.”

“As a parent whose daughters both dance with Sarah, I was so grateful that they were moving their bodies, even though they didn’t work as hard on Zoom as they do in person.,” McAdams says. “All of us have a little bit of trouble focusing on Zoom sometimes.”

Virtual Virtuosos

“We normally produce a fundraiser called the “7th Inning Stretch,” which is three days of new short plays about baseball,” McAdams says. “Instead we produced a sort of variety hour that was streamed. It had some Zoom plays about baseball, but because we weren’t in person, we were able to access some talent that was in California, and people who normally wouldn’t be able to come to Hoboken performed little bits and pieces.”

Weber Gallo adds, “We also were able to bring in students from outside the area. One of our dance families gave the gift of our summer camp to a cousin in Colombia, so we suddenly had an international reach. It’s an unexpected gift from this crazy year.”

Going virtual has broadened the audience. “I think that we all might be a little bit tired of watching Zoom performances, but I do think we will continue to use the technology,” Weber Gallo says. Even now that small, masked in-person audiences are being welcomed into the theater, it will continue to livestream performances. “That way any grandparents from anywhere in the world can participate in watching. It’s sort of a lovely opportunity that we didn’t have before.”

Mile Square welcomed its first in-person audience in October.

“We had to be separated in our pods, and we were limited to 30 audience members, but it was beautiful,” McAdams says.

Weber Gallo says, “I have a teenage choreography group where they work on a collaborative creation. We created an evening of work that was performed from inside Mile Square Theatre looking out from the picture windows, so that the audience was outside. It was as if you were watching a Zoom event because there were four windows, but it’s live. That was the first live performance that I had seen or been a part of in six months. They made a very intense piece of work.”

The performance was filmed and will be incorporated into its next performance this summer.

Filming has become a big part of MST productions. Its annual holiday production of “It’s A Wonderful Life,” usually staged as an in-person radio play, was filmed.

“We did it as a movie,” McAdams says. “We filmed it in our theatre, one actor at a time so that talent would be unmasked. We borrowed safety precautions that TV and films have been using.”

“It’s better than nothing to see family and friends over Zoom, or to be creative over Zoom,” McAdams says. “But it’s not the same. That’s the thing about the performing arts; there’s a live exchange of energy that happens to human beings when we’re in the same room. That’s what we cannot duplicate.”

Remember When

Mile Square Theatre is inching back toward a packed house, offering a hybrid model for classes in which some students are masked in the theater, while others attend via Zoom. This summer it will offer camps in person.

In May, ten masked parents watched a 15-minute masked improv performance. “We were really trying to work with the science; how big our space was, how our air flow was, and how long we would be in the room,” McAdams says.

In late May, it presented a small dance recital. “Students were limited to four tickets per person, so that we could keep our masked audience small and separated,” Weber Gallo says.

“Now that more people are vaccinated, and things are opening up, we will allow more people in the room,” McAdams adds. “It will be really different when we open up in the fall.”

Weber Gallo says, “The students will talk about it like, ‘Remember when we used to have 15 students all together in class? That was so fun!’”

Dual Roles

It’s hard to imagine going back to that, having been so vigilant all year about safety and separation,” Weber Gallo says. “As teachers, as arts professionals, we’ve been asked to become medical professionals, almost virologists. Some of the questions that I have fielded are 100 percent outside of my expertise. We feel very responsible for the safety of everybody in our spaces.”

She continues, “I hear from parents how thankful they are to have this outlet for their children, but how much their children missed dancing in the theater when we were all separated and doing this on Zoom. There’s a joy in coming back together and continuing to explore expression.”—07030