MoCo Arts has many theatre experiences to enjoy this spring, and from the comfort of your homes! This past fall, we switched our performance season to an online format, pre-recording our musicals and plays safely in our black box theatre and from the students’ homes over Zoom. These shows range from creative takes on favorite fairytales, an imaginative story of toys showing their mighty superpowers, and even the realism of what it is like to work at a Help Desk. All shows are available to watch On Demand throughout the semester and can be watched at the viewers convenience.
The first show released this spring was performed by MoCo Arts’ Elementary Play students, entitled Virtually Ever After. While bursting with familiar fairy tale characters, from the Big Bad Wolf and Little Red to Goldilocks and Baby Bear and Prince Charming and all the classic princesses, these original scenes are as fresh as they are funny! Best of all, the characters are all communicating via their phones or other devices, so these stories lend themselves perfectly to a remote performance!
“Performing a show entirely over video calls was a new challenge for the cast and myself, and they all worked hard to learn multiple parts and lots of lines while also dealing with all the things that come with the virtual format,” says Director Shannon Martin.
Students of the Elementary Musical Theatre class performed, Quimby’s Great Cape Caper!, written and directed by Kirsten Leach and music directed by Hannah Trombly. This show took a creative approach to performing with safety guidelines in place and told the story of toy superheroes coming together while encased in their toy boxes. Kristen says that “One of the things we worked on with the children to really appreciate was that they have been apart but together in many ways. A character in the show has a line that says, ‘We can do this apart, together’, and that is certainly something that we at MoCo Arts are proud that we’ve been able to do throughout the last year.” Quimby’s Great Cape Caper! is available to watch On Demand now.
Help Desk written by Don Zolidis is performed by the Middle and High School play students at MoCo. Director Laura Carbonneau states “Help Desk is a funny and, unfortunately, relatable show for many of us who have been stuck on hold listening to the same smooth jazz for hours on end. The rehearsal process has been easy and entertaining. We were able to utilize the Zoom breakout room feature to rehearse multiple scenes at once. Pairs of students were able to work together as teams to develop quirky characters and share them with the rest of the class and our high school students took on leadership roles working with the middle school students!”. This show will be available on Demand on April 25th, at 2pm.
For more information on how to watch MoCo Arts online performances, please visit moco.org/performances, that will lead to Vimeo, a video sharing platform. Each performance has the option to rent for 48 hours or to buy and download. Stay on the lookout for other upcoming performances by MoCo Arts, with opportunities for in person live audiences very soon!
