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ARTS ISSUE | JA N . 4, 202 1
THE ONTARION
"A Shot in the Dark" table read over Zoom. Top Row (L to R): Ally Keilhauer, Peter Kuling, Oren Bowes. Bottom Row (L to R): Graeme McClelland, Samantha Majoros, Thomas Smith. CREDIT: PETER KULING
Creating in a time of COVID A look at the creative projects conceived during the pandemic with the help of U of G funding TAYLOR PACE
O
ver summer 2020, the University of Guelph announced they would be offering up to $5,000 in funding for faculty members to lead creative projects related to the current pandemic. The school’s ensuing research initiative, titled “Creating in a Time of Coronavirus,” saw the creation of seven vastly different projects across multiple disciplines. Here is a look at three.
A SHOT IN THE DARK “A Shot in the Dark” is a theatre ensemble radio play led by Peter Kuling, assistant professor in the school of English and theatre studies, and a group of theatre students. The hour-long play was created as a pilot episode for an original sci-fi detective radio drama series. Inspired by our current pandemic, the play takes place in 1918 during the Spanish Flu. A spaceship is sent into space with
film noir era detectives as they search for a new way to end the pandemic. The ship lands on Pluto, and the three survivors must solve mysteries with aliens to find a cure for the pandemic and bring it back to Earth. The play was written by Kuling and seven theatre ensemble students, fourth-year students who were required to create a final theatrical project as part of their program. “Their project was shut down because of COVID-19, so we never got to perform in March,”
Kuling said. All of the students are voice actors in the play, along with around 20 guest actors from across Ontario. They spent about six weeks writing the play, and have been recording on Zoom since after Labour Day. Kuling says they applied for funding “with the idea that we would all record from our separate homes with microphones, and create sound booths out of everything from cardboard and cartons to curtains and towels.” One of the ways they needed to adapt was by building their own recording setups, which Sam Majoros, one of the student writers and voice actors who plays the detective, did. “I have this huge, old TV box that is duct taped together, and I put it around my computer with a giant quilt over top, which just makes it nice and sound-proofed. So I crawl in and out of that for recording sessions,” she said.
In addition to being paid for their time, the students were also gaining valuable real-world experience. “It’s been really cool and a really good way to network our students with other professionals that I know from the industry,” Kuling said. “I can't tell you the smiles I see from the people that I worked with in the winter term last year who never got to perform, because we're performing and having so much fun creating sound effects and creating voices.” Kuling says he hopes the play takes off enough for them to write more episodes in the future. The play will be free to listen, available on the U of G website when it’s released.
ODDITI(M)ES Another pandemic-inspired project was the puppet show created by assistant professor in the school of English and theatre studies Troy Hourie and a group of colleagues and students, titled “ODDITI(m)ES - A Tragic Comedy in Pandemic Times.” The show took a comedic approach to the frustrations the pandemic has caused, and was derived from personal experiences and those shared over social media. Hourie said that the kind of puppetry he does naturally lends itself to tragic comedy. Hourie and colleagues Andrew Gaboury and Colleen Snell modelled the play after the tradition of Dom Roberto, a traditional form of Portuguese puppetry. “Basically, it’s a look at our
everyday lives and this absurd situation that we’re all living in now in pandemic times,” he said. There are three puppets in the show: a baker, a gardener, and a barber. The show depicts their experiences and reactions as the pandemic regulations continue to change, eventually moving back into Phase 2. The show had two days of live audiences in August, with about 20 people sitting in a socially-distanced space outside. One of these shows was recorded and is available to view for free on Hourie’s website. “It was about looking at how difficult all our circumstances are, but finding the humour in it that we can laugh at,” he said.
CONNECTING GENERATIONS THROUGH JOURNALLING Concerned with the isolation among certain groups, assistant professor in the history department Kim Martin worked with students to develop a series of journals to connect generations. They sent out 200 journals to seniors in long term care and children from low-income and single-parent households, along with prompts to fill the blank pages with artwork related to the pandemic. Prompts included things like “draw your life before COVID” and “get all of your frustrations out on this page!” The journals were filled out in August and collected, with many of them sent to their “partners,” meaning a child would receive a book from a senior, and a senior
