On The Edge News

By Nora-Kathleen Berryhill

Edgewood College’s Theatre Arts Department will live-stream three Zoom readings of plays during the 2020-21 season on YouTube.  

The announcement comes after a presentation of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” was postponed due to COVID-19 concerns. The play “Tiny Beautiful Things,” which was cast in the spring, may still be performed in the fall either outdoors or online. 

Jeanne Leep, chair of the Theatre Arts Department, said she intended to stay optimistic and focus only on what is possible within current public health guidelines. The department will highlight the strengths of a remote format by choosing plays “where the words are really carrying the story.” 

Leep said she was inspired by a model used by Forward Theatre in its Wisconsin Wrights Play Festival in which she participated. Connecting with theatre companies in the Madison area and beyond, she said, is a helpful tool to navigate this new normal. 

“We all teach an art form that is temporal and live and defined by interpersonal human interaction. How do we modify something that doesn’t translate perfectly to an online experience? The answer is that nobody knows. We’re all figuring it out together.” 

During the spring semester, Leep found “something scrappy and can-do” about the way her students made remote acting work for them. She said her students tried out different camera angles and used household items as temporary substitutes for professional props and costumes. 

The fall performances will elevate and polish remote techniques from the spring, which had to switch online suddenly without preparation, Leep said. Though the spring experience did present some challenges, Leep felt that, overall, it showed how an online format can still be successful. 

Alan Lau-Brown, a senior majoring in Theatre Performance, agreed. “I am definitely looking forward to our department giving the virtual performances a try,” he said. “While this style of performance isn’t ideal, especially for college students who already have hectic schedules as it is, this is our craft and it’s what we love to do.” 

Leap said she also wants to reach a larger audience. She wants non-theatre majors to feel welcome to participate and use theatre to build on themes from their classwork. 

“Connecting theatre to what we’re doing in terms of academics makes a lot of sense, and it’s also part of our mission. What we’re doing is not solely for entertainment, but also to inform and enlighten our audience.” 

In the wake of protests sparking a nationwide conversation about race and police violence, Leep said she also plans on finding ways to “use the dramatic arts to explore that whole issue.” She said she hopes that having three plays will allow her department to diversify the season’s offerings. 

Lau-Brown recognizes the difficulty of performing shows that require a primarily non-white cast, as both the theatre department and Edgewood, in general, is mostly white. Leep said the department faces a similar problem with gendered roles, as the larger proportion of female students in the program makes it more difficult to find plays or musicals that give everyone an equal opportunity. 

Despite these logistical struggles, Lau-Brown said that theatre is a platform for increasing social awareness and facilitating change. “Theatre is all about telling stories, and more importantly, telling stories from all perspectives. Theatre talks about the things that we don’t give enough attention to but should.” 

In Lau-Brown’s opinion, the best way to get more students of color interested in theatre is to get more students of all backgrounds involved. “Edgewood can help foster diversity by giving more recognition to our department,” he said. 

Lau-Brown said that he is saddened by Edgewood students in their second or third year who are unaware that the theatre department “was down here in the Stream Building this whole time.”  

He said he wants to see the Edgewood community show up to support the arts on campus. 

“One of my favorite things to experience is when I see someone step out of their comfort zone on stage,” he said. “Including non-theatre majors is key to finding new audiences.”