Performing Arts in a Socially Distanced World
Bluefield College students, faculty and staff have faced a lot of challenges in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic this fall — in the classroom, in residence halls, in the athletic arena, in all of campus life. But no area has been harder than the performing arts community.
For example, BC band students are playing instruments with special masks and coverings for their instruments, if they are able to play at all, and theatre students are looking for alternative ways to perform.
“It’s not working, but we’re finding work-arounds,” said BC theatre professor Charles Reese about the state of theatre this year.
Theatre isn’t able to gather at all due to social distancing, not only the performers, but also the audiences. According to Reese, stage performance just can’t happen this year at all, but thankfully he has a plan.
“For Halloween, we’re going to do a recreation of the 1938 Orson Welles War of the Worlds broadcast,” Reese said. He admitted he has no idea exactly how they will pull it off, but said it will definitely be a unique experience since it is outside of the realm of typical theatre stage performance and it will be a production around Halloween, something Reese has never done at BC before.
War of the Worlds is a 1938 radio drama occurring the night before Halloween and featuring fake news bulletins describing a Martian invasion of America. Some listeners mistook the bulletins for the real thing, which quickly caused nationwide hysteria — an interesting reflection of the current status of the world today. The original airing occurred during the time leading up to World War II. Anxiety was high as it seems to be today, and when people heard the first half of the broadcast, some believed the country was truly being invaded.
Theatre students are actually practicing online through Teams and rehearsing their lines the same way. This, of course, has proven to be a little difficult due to issues with technology, but according to Reese it seems to be coming together well.
Reese said that he also believes that although it won’t be incredibly harmful in the long term, COVID-19 will likely have some lasting effects on the performing arts as we know it, mentioning that it is impossible to know exactly when they can bring performance back to the stage or when people will feel safe going back to a theatre.
“I think it will have some lasting repercussions,” Reese said. “I think we’ll come up with some kind of way to get around it, but it may look different in the future.”
Although it is hard to know exactly when performing arts will return to a state of, at least somewhat, normalcy, rest assured it will come back, and in the meantime BC music and theatre students and faculty are adjusting and coming up with alternatives to keep on performing.