Divulging the elements of the creative process behind a theatrical production is rare. Normally, the audience would sit in the theater and watch the show – perhaps marvel at the lights, sound, set, costumes, acting, singing, dancing – but know nothing about the process of putting the show together. But as with everything else this year, nothing is “normal”, and so it feels important to let you in on some of the details of creating a virtual musical.

First, we were never all in the same room at the same time. This is never the case for a traditional show; collaboration and time together are hallmarks of the process. But there isn’t a space large enough to allow for the number of cast, crew, and faculty involved, and we also had fully remote students, a rotating schedule of students on campus, and unexpected quarantine periods with which to contend.

Rehearsal involved scene work both in-person and via Zoom; music was learned on remote days since singing can’t happen indoors; and choreography was taught both in-person and remotely, in spaces large enough to hold the students involved in any particular song.

And given that this is a virtual production, everything was pre-recorded and edited together. Scenes were recorded on Zoom on Fridays, our only fully remote day so that we could have all actors in a scene unmasked. Musical numbers were recorded individually by each cast member. Students recorded themselves singing, and each separate audio track was mixed for each musical number, then students recorded themselves dancing (in costume and in specific filming locations), while also singing. The audio from these video recordings was pulled out and the higher quality mixed audio dropped in – but the need for students to sing while dancing was imperative so that the movement of their mouth would match the audio track. All this said, there were nearly two hundred audio and video recordings gathered.

Technicians worked in new ways as well. They gathered all of the props for the show and distributed them to the performers before the very first day of recording. They then built a model of the set and practiced lighting design skills in our 2″ scale lighting lab. The recordings of these design sessions became the “broadcast backgrounds” that you will see during the songs and scene shifts.

There were challenges, of course, but there is no question that this was an incredibly positive and rewarding process for each of us. In our last rehearsal, students reflected on the experience, repeatedly bringing up themes of perseverance, resiliency, responsibility, growth – and even collaboration. In a time when everything is different, how fortunate we are for this bit of normalcy!

– Sara O’Toole