Miss live theater? These Charlotte groups offer shows, concerts you can watch at home
If you were missing live music or theater in the early days of the stay-at-home order, you didn’t have to miss them for long. Performers quickly popped up on our phone and computer screens to keep us entertained and connected.
The communal experience that makes a live performance so life-affirming has been missing. But a performance viewed on a small screen has been enough. In a pandemic, it turns out, the performing arts are a life raft.
Opera Carolina has been streaming digital concerts each Friday at 6 p.m. Jazz Arts Charlotte holds “Conversations with Curtis” every Tuesday at 8 p.m. These online and interactive events feature guest artists and a live Q&A moderated by Jazz Room Emcee Curtis Davenport.
“Quarantine Concerts,” started by Zachary Tarlton, is giving area performers a virtual stage. Singers, actors and cast members from past shows have gathered (virtually) to bring joy to our sheltered existences.
Ron Law, Theatre Charlotte’s long-time executive director, hatched the idea of live, online dramatic readings.
The series premiered with an all-star cast who read “Outward Bound,” Theatre Charlotte’s first production from 1928. In that and subsequent shows, actors read their parts from the safety of their own homes. Theater lovers can tune in live or watch a recording later.
The “Outward Bound” cast and crew had to figure things out on the fly. “There were some technical difficulties during the first one,” Law said. “And we discovered a full-length play is too long for people to watch on a little screen.”
Radio days
But a 30-minute, old-timey radio play is just right. So, Theatre Charlotte’s “Isolation Radio Hour” was born. The weekly online event features a 30-minute comedy and a 30-minute drama/thriller.
This isn’t amateur hour. The plays are read by trained actors who have had (remote) rehearsals the day before.
Isn’t not having an audience tough for actors? They can’t gauge audience reaction.
“Yes,” said Law. “After the first one, Chase asked if we could add a laugh track.”
Chase Law is Ron’s wife. She and their 15-year-old daughter, Chloe, a ninth grader at Northwest School of the Arts who’s been acting since she was 4, performed in an episode of “Father Knows Best,” available for viewing on YouTube.
Theatre Charlotte has become almost a one-stop shop for pandemic programming.
It is auditioning for a mock musical that will never be produced. (That really takes the pressure off!) “Quarantine: The New At-Home Musical” is giving everyone an opportunity for 15 minutes, give or take, of fame. Rewrite a song with “quarantinian” lyrics and submit your audition tape. You could be featured on an episode.
And TC Teachables, every Tuesday at 4 p.m., offers content for teachers, students and parents-filling-in-as-teachers.
A cure for withdrawals
One of the area’s most intimate theaters — the 56-seat Warehouse Performing Arts Center in Cornelius — recently began a “Warehouse Withdrawal” series. “We were missing our audiences,” said Artistic Director Marla Brown.
They’ve shared a “fireside reading” of a David Sedaris essay; “Crazy Eights & Baby Food,” a one-act play by David Lindsay-Abaire (“Fuddy Meers,” “Wonder of the World”) and a community talent show.
Brown isn’t letting social isolation stymie her creativity. She’s thinking of how to harness technology in our “new normal.”
“I love technology,” she said. “Love it! And I look forward to the creative ways theater will adapt and expand” post-pandemic.
She expects to keep up the online offerings through at least June – but may continue longer: “Given that there are so many good plays compared to production slots, I could see this becoming fodder for a series.”
“Bottom line though,” Brown said. “the business of the Warehouse is intimate theater. It allows for an embodied, visceral, connected experience among actors and audience. That cannot be captured digitally.”
Grab the popcorn
The Charlotte Film Society started its Virtual Screening Room almost as soon as coronavirus stay-at-home orders began.
“Distributors had all these movies ready to release, and suddenly theaters were closed,” said Jay Morong, program director for the nonprofit CFS and senior lecturer of theater and film at UNC Charlotte. With movie theaters shuttered for now, it made sense for the film society to step in.
“Our core membership has loved this,” Morong said. “Since we don’t have a permanent home, we usually offer two or three screenings a month at Theatre Charlotte or C3 Lab. But with the virtual screening room, we’ve offered about 18 movies in the past six weeks.”
CFS is experimenting with a live component to some screenings. Sam Shapiro, formerly of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Public Library and current film instructor at UNC Charlotte, led a recent post-screening ZOOM Q&A for “The Booksellers.”
You can rent a film from the Virtual Screening Room for between $10 and $12 and keep it for three to five days. The Oscar-nominated “Corpus Christi” has been popular, Morong said. “Best of Cat Video Fest” was another crowd-pleaser, but Morong isn’t sure if that’s because it was available on a “pay-what-you-can” basis or thanks to the public’s insatiable appetite for cat videos.
This pandemic has plenty of lessons to teach us. One might be that the performing arts have proven to be essential.
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