As all of us know, this pandemic has not been very kind to the arts. Performers, Designers, Directors, and many other artists are out of employment all across the country. How can we create while distanced? Thankfully, Fringe Arts refused to let the pandemic halt the 2020 Fringe Festival. This year, the festival will be predominately virtual. Fringe Arts will be featuring over 120 works, ranging from several different genres, styles, and platforms: whether it be online or outside. Regardless of the platform, all performances will follow all state and city guidelines around social distancing and public health measures.
You can find out more about this year’s Fringe festival here: https://fringearts.com/2020-fringe-festival/
After hearing that Fringe festival will be still be occurring (with a monumentally cheaper entrance fee,) a group of young artists saw it as the perfect time to debut their new musical, Villager.
Villager is an original musical written and composed by Daniel Jones and directed by Brittney Anderson. We follow our hero, Villager, as they return to their village after being away for five years. They come back to discover that the place they once called home is in disarray with weeds everywhere and, worst of all, several neighbors have moved away. Their absence resonates very deeply in the hearts of their friends left behind. Will they be able to mend their relationships, or will they give up? With a group of cautious artists and the use of multiple cameras, live streaming sound and video – Villager is a multimedia live stage musical.
This musical is the inaugural production of The Void Theatre Collective in collaboration with 10th Floor Productions. I was very inspired by the group’s ingenuity and boldness to start creating art at a time like this, so I (virtually) sat down with the lead collaborators to get a closer look at the process.
You can read more about The Void Collective here: www.thevoidtheater.wixsite.com
You can read more about 10th Floor productions here: https://www.10thfloor.live/
Brittney Andrson, the director, first approached the playwright, Daniel Jones, around April to talk about working together in the Fringe. They were working on several projects, but nothing felt right for this specific venture, so she asked if there was anything on the backburner. Thankfully, Jones had just started working on the project that would become Villager. Jones was almost overcome with the melancholy and dread brought on by the pandemic. “I just felt like there was this call to stop making art…People had just stopped making things, but I don’t think that’s the way to go about enacting change.” He used his writing to fight against the ennui. He wanted to fight against the voices (the government, naysayers) that were saying that theatre wasn’t necessary or vital at this time. “As artists, you have to continue to move forward when everything is telling you to stop. It’s a revolutionary act to continue. One of the central ideas about Villager is that it sometimes feels impossible to keep going, and that’s okay, but it’s worth trying.” The show is also born out of the longing for connection, a sensation with which we’ve all become familiar. For Dan, the experience of isolation has shattered the illusion that social media truly connects us. It was this idea of personal connection that drew Anderson to the piece. Having just graduated, Anderson felt this responsibility to remain accountable for her career and her relationships with her family and her friends who were starting to move away, and it hit her very hard. Being kept physically distant made saying “goodbye” so much harder. What makes the piece so special to Anderson, however, is how it handles talking about these issues. The show takes place in a cartoonish world, so it tackles these complicated topics very compassionately and whimsically. “I want to give the audience a hug [with this show],” Anderson said, “which is something we need right now.”
There are a lot of reasons not to make something right now. It would be easy to talk yourself out of doing something so daring when the state of the theatre industry is so up in the air. But it was that uncertainty that drove these artists to take the plunge. The idea of “waiting it out” or just “making do” didn’t sit right with them. Jones expressed a lot of sadness around the notion that artists as a whole were biding time until they got to do a real show when this is all over. The possibility that this was going to be the norm for an extended period was not okay with him. “I think that we should do a real show now.” Anderson described these goals as more of our duty as artists. So many innovative theatre forms were born out of times of strife, so it’s our job to embrace the chaos and find a way to push the field forward safely. The idea of being at the forefront of this change is inspiring for the team.
The original idea for this production was to perform a very small-scale show in a basement and live-stream that performance to the audience. Unfortunately, the team made this plan in early May, and the hope was that the pandemic would be much more under control by September. After actors brought up safety concerns, they had to adapt. I spoke with one of the actors on the project, Anna Lieberman, about how she was feeling in regards to her safety. As cases rose, the idea of doing a musical in any semblance of a traditional way proved more dangerous. Despite her apprehensions, Lieberman spoke up. “I chatted with Brittney to voice my concerns. What’s great about working with them is that my concerns weren’t pushed aside for the sake of the idea of the project…I’m so happy that the environment was one where I could talk about everything, and I feel so much better about the protocols put into place.” What protocols? There was a full upheaval of the entire rehearsal process and the performance style. I talked with the director to discuss how the process has evolved. Through a program called Notch, the design team has made it possible to film each actor in separate rooms and place them into a virtual world. To prepare for the isolated nature of the performance, Anderson rehearses each scene with the actors masked and distanced in an open space like a park. “We’re going to block out the scene and get them used to each other’s energies,” Anderson said, “[we’ll] block through what it’s going to look like ideally and drill that meticulously. It’s going to be a lot of meticulous work to get the energy of a two-person scene while the actors are separate.”
Now, if you’re anything like me, your brain is exploding at this technological concept. I sat down with 10th Floor Productions member Larry Barnes to try to understand how this process will work. 10th Floor has always been part of the process; they were going to help create the house show. However, with the COVID concerns, 10th Floor played a considerable role in adapting and changing the process to accommodate everyone. “It all starts with trying to keep actors safe. We first identify the non-negotiables with the production team: the actors and team must follow strict social distancing rules, and the entire production has to be live. Honestly, just those two already posed a massive challenge.” After COVID concerns shot down the house show idea, it became evident that the actors were going to have to be completely isolated from each other, and they’d have to use “theatre magic” to make them interact. Then, the idea was to project the actors onto a scale model, but that couldn’t work because it proved nearly impossible to portray emotions at that scale. This downfall, however, became the gateway to the final idea. “The issue with the projected actors was that we could not have the camera close enough to see their emotions. How do you fix this? You do the whole sow inside of a computer.” There is a mix of programs that will make this “magic” happen: the two most notable of which are Notch and OBS. Notch creates the virtual world and brings the actors into it while OBS is the streaming software that will fill in the gaps. Notch works like a game engine. It is built to be running and rendering visuals live. Where most visual creation tools need to be rendered and replayed, Notch is doing both of those processes at the same time. “This is essential for actor interaction with the virtual world that we are creating.”
This change was a huge wakeup call for the Void production team. A lot of them had no idea how this program worked nor how they were going to be able to do their jobs within the program. Everyone’s roles had to evolve significantly. Anderson realized that not only would she have to block the actors, she’d also have to teach the blocking to the designers. “In this virtual world, he [Barnes] can move them [the actors] together. I have to then teach him the blocking so that he can make them do things that match what they would be doing in the physical world.” Perhaps no one on the creative team had to evolve as much stage manager, Kelly Fleming. In some aspects, their techniques just required some more focus and attention. “It’s scheduling, comfort, and communication. It’s always about communication, but now more than ever.” However, in other ways, their role has changed entirely. “The way that we’re taught Stage Management is ‘always adapt;’ every process is different, and you’re always learning what the process needs. But all of that is still in a traditional theatrical realm. The usual stage management stuff doesn’t apply here.” Whereas typically, Fleming has a pretty good idea of what the tech process will look like because, even though every process is different, the majority of the tech elements are the same: tracking scene changes, calling the cues, spiking the space. In this process, however, there’s camera angles, sanitation cues, monitoring and calling the virtual world and the physical one simultaneously, learning how to run off of solely the monitors, striking the traffic patterns in the house to make sure everyone is at least 6 feet apart at all times. They’re both evolving the role of Stage Manager while also adopting the responsibilities of a Public Health Liasion.
So much change can be staggering. I asked the team how they were able to get into the mindset that allowed them to be able to change their plans so drastically. When it came down to it, the name of the game was trust: trust in themselves and trust in their collaborators. Anderson said, “Though I’m stressed, they [her collaborators] know what they’re doing, and they’re going to take care of me through everything.” Fleming, whose role changed in a very substantial way, provided somewhat of a system. “It’s just about bringing awareness and attention to the fact that things are always changing,” they said, “I work on not letting my expectation have enough weight to throw me off.” It’s a thinker. You plan not to have a plan. On the surface, that phenomenon can seem impossible to understand. In this process, their planning for every possible thing, but not putting too much hope in any particular outcome, so whatever happens, they can adapt. Everything goes smoothly? Great. Everything implodes? Great. This willingness to change seems very indicative of young artists. Whereas more seasoned professionals can get stuck in their ways and let something unexpected ruin their process, fresher creators are continually allowing themselves to learn and change, which gives them more room to change directions in their operation.
The entire team is very proud of the work that has been done already and is excitedly working for success in this new form. However, what’s most exciting is how the team perceives this project’s success in the grand scheme. It would mean a lot to each artist. Both Fleming and Anderson expressed the belief that “if this all works out, I’ll never be afraid of a process ever again.” Tackling such a behemoth of a show as a debut-in perhaps the worst possible time-has these artists hungry to continue. They were most excited about what their success could mean for the theatre community as a whole. Everyone I interviewed unanimously expressed the hope that virtual Fringe and Villager specifically will empower artists all over the country to embrace this kind of innovation rather than ignoring it in hopes of waiting for a return to normalcy. “I think this is the time that we’re building a new style and a new form,” Anderson said, “I think of my theatre history and style classes. All of those [styles and forms] were created when the world and community needed something different. I think we need to start looking at this like that, and I’m excited to be a part of it.” The whole team shares this sentiment. This pandemic can not and will not halt creativity.
Villager is the inaugural production of the Void Theatre Collective, and it is produced in collaboration with 10th Floor Productions. The musical premieres Sept 11th (8 pm), 12th (8 pm), and 13th (2 pm.) Tickets are available here: https://fringearts.com/event/villager/.
Sincerely, Däv 