The show must go on: Hamilton student performances take the virtual stage
Student performers and their teachers at Glendale Secondary School sent 155 audio and video files — each recorded and filmed individually, with the help of tripod, parent or friend — to a remote editor.
Returned to them was the first scene of the Broadway musical “Cats.” “It’s absolutely amazing to hear all the choral parts together, because you’re doing it on your own. You know, you kind of feel alone,” said Vivien Tanner, 17, a Grade 12 drama and vocal major at Glendale Secondary School’s audition-based arts program. “But when you get it back and you hear everyone, you love to hear all of this work that’s gone into it come out as amazing as it has.”
Tanner is part of the Gumbie Trio, based off wartime swing group The Andrews Sisters.
“In our song, we kind of have that attitude like them,” she said, adding that two of her closer friends make up the other two-thirds of the trio.
Students across Hamilton are putting the final touches on year-end productions, concerts and exhibits — a feat that posed unprecedented obstacles this year amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The biggest challenge of doing this has been overcoming the limitations the screen,” said Paul Borsc, co-ordinator of Glendale’s audition-based arts program. “Technology has been amazing and that’s why the show is really going to go, but it’s also one of the biggest hurdles.”
With schools shuttered for nearly half the school year, “the inherent disconnect of not being face to face” has made putting together a 60-student production — the only musical with Concord Theatricals, the company that holds the rights to “Cats,” running in southwestern Ontario — tough, Borsc said.
“Working with someone in proximity, you can get so much done faster and tell so much more than a screen,” he said, adding that, even with masks, body language conveyed in person is much more effective.
The production, which premières on June 25 on Broadway on Demand, is made up of nearly a thousand individual files, Borsc estimates.
Vocal major Kaz Pearce, 16, who plays Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat, said his character favourite part of the show is his charter’s song, a welcome break from being part of the ensemble.
“When I get to my thing and they tell me, ‘here, here’s the key, we’ll unlock you, do whatever you want,’” the Grade 11 student said. “I can dance how I like to dance, I can act how I would like to act, I can do what I want for the song, what I think my version of Skimbleshanks is.”
In addition to many virtual theatre productions, media and visual arts students with the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board (HWDSB) will submit works to the Art Gallery of Hamilton’s Virtual DreamSpace exhibit, curated by senior students.
“We’re extremely proud of those artists, but also the educators throughout the public board that have really stepped up to offer some of these opportunities for students to be able to showcase their work,” said Luke Bramer, a program consultant with the board. “We know that the arts play that pivotal role not only intellectual, but … the social development of students, but also their emotional growth and just their overall well-being.”
Click here to read the full story in
Updated on Tuesday, June 15, 2021.