The Show Must Go On(line

Drama students adjust to the virtual stage

By Daniel Stevenson | Photo by Cornell Watson

chool remains virtual and many extracurricular groups have shelved projects this semester, but East Chapel Hill High School students have adapted their fall theater season into a virtual play reading series. The group reads scripts together over Google Meet and has four scheduled performances over the semester. Virtual theater has presented its challenges. Student directors, actors and stage managers have all made changes to their roles to fit the format. But for many students, theater helps make virtual learning feel more normal. “I think virtual theater has really been the thing that has grounded me,” says Maria Ledin, a senior at East Chapel Hill. “I feel like I know the work, and then I can connect it to how it used to work. Everything else for school has been very fluid because it’s new and unfamiliar.”

The group is split into two productions: a G series and an R series, the latter featuring Pulitzer Prizewinning plays that contain mature content. Parent permission slips are required to participate in the R series, and student actors can choose to read or skip inappropriate content in the script. Hope Hynes Love, the director of the after-school program for East Chapel Hill who facilitates the series, sees this as an unintended benefit of the virtual productions. “There is mature content that we would never be able to produce if we were physicalizing many of the things that were happening on stage,” Hope says. “But as a virtual play reading, we have the advantage of being able to honor all of those constraints.”

A unique element in Hope’s approach to virtual drama is the Critical Response Process (CRP), a collaborative method used to provide feedback and workshop all roles within a creative process. Hope was awarded a professional development grant by Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools and studied with CRP creators Liz Lerman and John Borstel just before shutdowns in March. She now uses the technique with her students as a

development tool, giving individuals the opportunity But as a virtual play reading, junior and stage manager with the group. Jonathan has to share their experiences and opinions about the we have the collaborated with the program several times, including performance of each creative role – from actors to advantage of being on a production of his play “Crazytown” last November. directors – through all stages of the production. “This able to honor all of those “He’s been super gracious and super lovely about is almost like a human resources program for me as the constraints. offering those opportunities to my students and letting artistic director, because nobody knows my job better them be a part of some of those things,” Hope says. than all of them,” Hope says. “It’s been transformative The group will air a reading of “Sweat” by Lynn for me as a teacher.” Nottage for their R-rated series and “You Can’t Take

In August, the students worked with nationally known playwright It With You” by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart for their G-rated Jonathan Rand to read and workshop an adapted script of his play, series on Dec. 16. For an invitation to view an upcoming reading, email “Check Please.” “He was pretty fun to work with,” says Laura Stone, a hlove@chccs.k12.nc.us. CHM