The Oakland Press

Companies look ahead to ’21

Local theaters attempt to pick up pieces of virus-shortened season Oakland University Theater Department confronts race, COVID-19

- By Carol Azizian By Christian Todd

They say the show must go on, but for local theaters the COVID-19 pandemic has upended that guarantee.

Jason Wilhoite, president of the Farmington Players, says this the first time in the theater’s 67-year history that its famous Barn Theater has stayed dark.

“We canceled our production of

“Mary Poppins” — it was meant to be in April/May and we attempted to postpone it until September/October,” Wilhoite says. “We’re suspending operations until further notice. When it’s safe to open up, we’ll take a look at what we might want to do and how long it would take to do a production.

“If we can’t sell out the audience, we can’t afford to do ‘Mary Poppins’ because it’s an expensive show,” he added. “We don’t want to put any patrons or cast at risk. We don’t want to produce a show where you have to have your temperatur­e checked and have masks. It takes away the entire escape of theater and puts you in an uncomforta­ble situation.”

Wilhoite says they’re looking at virtual options and smaller cast shows or performanc­es “outside in our parking lot with people in cars.”

The world-changing events of this spring and summer have forced the Oakland University School of Music, Theatre and Dance to adjust the way it approaches performanc­e in more ways than one.

When schools shut down to avoid spreading the novel coronaviru­s in March, the OU theater department moved to remote video conference classes. Shows that were to be performed during the remainder of the semester were either postponed or canceled.

Then last month, after the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor at the hands of police, and protests broke out around the world, awareness of racial inequality came home to OU as well.

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