A year after the university closed in-person classes, students and faculty reflect on the impact COVID-19 had on day-to-day life for arts students, and what they have learned in the ensuing year.
Lance Marsh, head of performance for the School of Theatre, said the coronavirus challenged the faculty of the School of Theatre and Wanda L. Bass School of Music to rethink all of their strategies around teaching live performance.
“I’ve learned that there are a lot more ways to teach performance than I thought there were before all this starting. I learned a few new things deeply that will change my teaching forever, for the better,” Marsh said.
Marsh said the regulations regarding personal distance, class sizes and face coverings forced him to continue innovating to offer his students the education they deserved.
“One example is going to sound really silly. It has to do with pool noodles,” Marsh said. “What I teach has a lot to do with physicalizing acting towards your partner and pushing and pulling. All of that requires touching. With the protocol, I was literally at a loss.”
Marsh said his wife suggested using pool noodles to recreate the tension between actors. He said he tried out the method and found success.
“There’s something about having that physical object between the two actors where they’re constantly pushing and pulling their space between them. I found the pool noodles to be incredibly effective in enhancing that,” Marsh said. “So, I’m going to continue using the pool noodles after this.”
Marsh said the lack of audiences and the addition of streaming for performances changed his role as a theater producer for the School of Theatre.
“I really like the ability to stream because it allows friends, parents who can’t travel, grandparents who can’t travel, to see student performers’ work. There’s more access to it, which is very cool,” Marsh said.
Marsh said he would keep streaming productions after the pandemic, but likely won’t be able to due to tightening regulations from the licensing companies.
“This year, the rights houses have been very good about offering people something they’ve never had before, which is the rights to stream,” Marsh said. “We’re already seeing those streaming rights becoming less easy to get, or impossible to get, as people are perched waiting for live theater to reopen with live audience.”
Marsh said he was worried about the impact the coronavirus would have on the theater programs, but he believes he was able to accomplish nearly everything he wanted to through creative answers to problems.
“I don’t feel like the seniors who are graduating this year are going off with significantly lesser training than any other group of seniors had,” Marsh said. “They’re going off into a market with tons of uncertainty, but that’s not anything we can control here. I believe we’ve been able to maintain a really high level of quality.”
Marsh said what he misses most about the program before the pandemic is working through scenes and being able to see the actors’ faces.
“There’s something about the human face that is so evocative and so vulnerable and so rich in terms of its ability to communicate,” Marsh said. “I miss that.”
Grant Wilson, acting junior, said what he most looks forward to after the pandemic is performing alongside actors without masks and making connections.
“We don’t get to do that anymore, so I feel like we’re losing a part of what we need to go out into the field, and we’re going to have to learn that on our own,” Wilson said.
Wilson said another challenge in the year since the beginning of the pandemic is the distance between students.
“I really look forward to interacting with my class again. We’ve all grown a little distant, I think because we can’t interact in the same ways as before,” Wilson said. “Last semester, I was in a Stage II production, which was a lot of fun and I learned a lot, but I don’t know half the cast still.”
Wilson said the limitations and restrictions during the pandemic have reignited some of his passion in interesting ways.
“It’s made me active to learn. I feel like I’m learning less, so I want to learn more. When we get lines for a scene or something, I just want to do really well, so I memorize it as soon as I can, and I get it down,” Wilson said. “In a normal year, I guess I would have been more tired, and I’d be taking it for granted. I don’t do that now.”
Allie Milburn, music theater/vocal performance junior, said they attended courses during the fall semester remotely due to health restrictions. They have now returned to on-campus training for the spring semester.
“I am a type-one diabetic. I didn’t think being in on campus was a good idea at the time. It was hard being separated from the sense of community that being on campus at our school provides,” Milburn said. “Being back here, I feel a lot more artistically charged and have a lot more creative energy.”
Milburn said being away from campus created a sense of isolation which made improvement in their craft more challenging.
“It was hard. Since I wasn’t going to school in person, I was missing being able to create all the time. It’s really easy when you’re surrounded by your bubble of mutual artists,” Milburn said. “That’s a perk of being here, but you often don’t think about what if feels like to lose that. It became frighteningly clear to me last semester.”
Milburn said returning to school this spring created a difficult but welcome transition. They said working with professors in person and performing in “The Consul” with the School of Music helped them get back on track, but they still struggle with the separation from other students.
“Frankly put, I miss my friends. I miss being able to be around people and make those connections with friends and develop relationships,” Milburn said. “It’s hard to not be around like-minded people as much and collaborate. I do songwriting with some of my friends here, and we haven’t been able to get together and do that.”
Milburn said something is lost as an arts student during the pandemic, but they are grateful for the chance to create art at all.
“Coming back into a show after being away for so long is such a great opportunity,” Milburn said. “It’s a part I have wanted to play for a while. It was intense coming back into such a fast environment after being at home, but I did come back, and I am trying hard. I’m trying twice as hard.”
The School of Music and School of Theatre have produced 13 productions without audiences since the beginning of the pandemic.
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