‘I thought our show had been cancelled’
Sheridan students’ play about communicating online had to be performed … online
A world where school takes place online and young people struggle for intimacy while communicating almost exclusively through screens: this is the scenario of the musical “In Real Life,” which due to the COVID-19 pandemic has actually become real life.
And thanks to technology and the perseverance of all involved, Sheridan College was able to complete a workshop production of the show this month, with rehearsals and a performance all happening online.
“The timing couldn’t be more perfect in a weird way,” said Daniel Allain, who played the show’s lead character, Max.
Sheridan has released a professionally produced video of the show’s opening number, “A Million,” on YouTube, as well as audio recordings of other musical numbers — which will serve as great calling cards for the young cast, and co-creators Nick Green (book and lyrics) and Kevin Wong (music and lyrics).
In the show, Max is a model student who goes on a journey into the forbidden corners of the internet, along the way discovering new things about himself and renewing his relationship with his two best friends.
“The show is so prescient about technology,” said director Ann Hodges. “Three people who end up through technology finding each other again … We kept on saying, ‘Oh my God, this is so relevant.’ ”
Green and Wong have been working on the show since 2018 and this workshop production was a key point in its development. As part of Sheridan’s Canadian Music Theatre Project (which was the incubator for the smash hit “Come From Away”), fourth-year students in the college’s Bachelor of Musical Theatre Performance program were less than a week into rehearsals when COVID hit and public assembly was called off.
Cancelling the production entirely would not only have halted the creative process, but deprived the students of this capstone learning moment.
Michael Rubinoff, producing artistic director of the Canadian Music Theatre Project, asked the creative team if they were willing to take the process online. “I have to give all the credit to them. They stepped up and said let’s keep going, let’s explore the tools and continue to re-evaluate what works from a team perspective and a student perspective,” he said.
The students were eager to keep the process moving but also had what Rubinoff called “a healthy skepticism” about whether it would work. “I thought our show had been cancelled,” said Allain. “What could we possibly do?”
After a week’s hiatus, rehearsals started up again on Zoom, with Hodges in Winnipeg, music director Chris Barillaro in Montreal, choreographer Janie Pinard in Sudbury, set and lighting designer Joe Pagnan in Stoney Creek, projection designer Nick Bottomley in Halifax, and students spread across the country from Vancouver to Bonnyville, Abta., to St. John’s, N.L.
There were early hitches. “On the first day we realized, ‘OK, there’s always a sound lag,’ and Zoom can slow down depending on what people are doing,” said Hodges. If an actor’s parent was having a Zoom meeting during rehearsal, for example, the connection became spotty.
They adapted: Barillaro and Wong sent the students music tracks to sing along with and Pinard put up movement teaching videos at unlisted YouTube links. Hodges homed in on the students’ acting: “We could still do scene work and continue to develop them as new actors.”
Bottomley worked with the rest of the team on what the screen would look like for the “A Million” number and then edited together individual videos of the students’ performances.
There were challenges, but also rewards, said Allain. “So much of theatre is about physical connection: to be able to react and to be there with a person. Going online forced us all to listen more to what we were saying with each other.”
Because rehearsals went well, the company agreed to a one-off Zoom performance of the whole show for Sheridan faculty and the performers’ families. Because Zoom can’t support voices singing or speaking simultaneously, the musical numbers were recorded and the actors lip-synched to them, but spoken scenes were live.
The best part of performing, said Allain, is the rush you feel when you walk onstage and feel the audience’s energy. It wasn’t quite the same doing “In Real Life” online, but there was a feeling of togetherness with the cast “even though we were across the country.”
His parents were watching at home in Hamilton while he performed in another room: “I came upstairs at the intermission for a glass of water and my mom was like, ‘You’re doing great, sweetie.’ ”
Allain performed the final musical number live “and I remember bursting into tears,” said Rubinoff. “It was really powerful from an educator’s perspective.” That online showing “was probably one of the highlights of my career,” added Hodges.
Wong and Green didn’t make as many changes to the material as they would have in a live rehearsal process, but the show “somehow managed to get where it needs to be,” said Wong. “The premise of the show has been proven true by this rehearsal process. The sense of real connection comes in surprising ebbs and flows through the screen.”
He and Green will work toward a full professional production when gatherings become possible again.
“There has been a lot of discourse about how theatre can’t be replaced by these online processes,” said Wong. While he agrees to a point, “it’s also wrong to say it’s completely futile … We made a very different kind of lemonade out of these lemons.”