Performing Arts in Quarantine

Reported by Molly Giesbrecht

Photographed by Danny Walker

NEWBERG, Ore. - The arts, particularly theatre and music, have had to make many adjustments in order to work around the mandates set in place due to COVID-19 and the resulting limitations on classrooms and other activities around campus.

In-person communication and connection are very important to the performing arts. Unfortunately, this also makes them some of the most dangerous subjects to be held in-person during a pandemic. Currently, all band classes are held over Zoom with students playing in private practice rooms or their own dorm rooms, as it is unsafe for wind instruments to be played in the vicinity of other people. However, band students do meet in-person once a week without instruments in order to help foster connections and community.

All acting classes are also held online, but other theater classes that do not involve acting, such as Understanding Drama and Theater Ministry, are being held in-person.

Junior theater major Johnathan Billington has felt the distance and lack of community very personally.

“It's difficult to maintain the same sense of community. I can feel pretty isolated some days. … There is no waiting together for a scene to start or idle discussion as our director figures out what to do next, it's very hard to express what this feels like but the best word that I can come up with is sterile,” Billington said.

Empty auditorium. Photographed by Danny Walker

While students may still be able to see each other in-person in other classes, many feel it is not the same when having to act with one another over a computer. Similarly, in band, students have reported that it is difficult to feel like a unified ensemble when they are not able to play with each other in person.

“I feel a lot like we are somewhat isolated, and I definitely feel more like an individual musician [than a part of an ensemble] because we are not playing together in the same room, said Scott Demaree, a first-year saxophone player in both the Symphonic Band and the Jazz Ensemble. “However, I don’t feel left out and I feel like I am part of the group since everybody is isolated, and the in-person meetings help a ton.”

Theater professor Rhett Luedtke is working hard to maintain the community for students, and has not given up hope. “I think it’s harder, that's for sure. But I also think that this particular community is up for the task. Because it's so community based, I thought for sure that we wouldn't be able to retain all of our students this year, that some folks would just take a year off, and come back and finish their education when things are better,” he said. “But every single one of our majors from last year showed up this year. We had 100% retention. So there's something about the community we've already built over the past years that is being sustained.”

Even with restricted classrooms and meetings, the arts departments are still finding ways to have performances, albeit in ways they never have before. Coming later this fall, the theater department will be putting on a play over Zoom, called Silent Sky by Lauren Gunderson. The audience will be able to join and watch the show live. This will be the first time the performing arts department has put on a live performance that is not in-person. Currently, a cast of students is rehearsing for a radio drama show of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, which will be released in the beginning of December. More information and ticket sales for both of those performances will be available in the coming weeks.

There are tentative plans in place for the spring regarding theater performances. However, these may change depending on COVID. “We’re not sure what will happen in spring,” Luedtke said. “We’re hoping for what we’re gonna call a theater installation in February, which will be small theatrical pieces. The play will be called Parables. Global parables, also Biblical, contemporary, ancient, and you travel around campus to different places outdoors to hear 13-15 different stories told.”

Following that, the hope is to be able to produce a fully in-person stage play in the spring, where they will perform Passage, by Christopher Chen. This show was meant to be produced last spring, but production was halted when campus closed early. More information on these performances will be available later on, once it is more clear what spring semester will look like for performing arts classes and events.

“The professors can't do anything better than what they are doing. They are doing the absolute best they can given the restrictions lain down by the administration,” Billington said.