Actors zooming towards online theatre

Technology is helping theatre students hunkered down hundreds of kilometres apart create an inspiring online theatre experience.

“We are aiming for a seamless theatre experience with overlapping stories and multiple camera feeds, where worlds sometimes collide,” says theatre lecturer Linda Lorenza from CQUniversity’s Central Queensland Conservatorium of Music in Mackay.

“But frankly we are building the plane while flying it so it’s going to be a great achievement.”

Dr Lorenza says the dispersal of students back to their home towns across Queensland meant the Con’s planned Mystery of Edwin Drood musical production could not be staged as an assessment.

But creativity loves a constraint, and the students are instead linking up online to create new work relevant to this new socially distanced world.

“Instead, our theatre students have been devising their own online dramas in response to Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds and the current pandemic.

“Working with actor and film director Akos Armont, we will present a mini-season of these War in our World dramas online, on three evenings from 17-19 June.

Con students will also present a session of short radio plays with some visual enhancements on Friday 12 June.

“Preparing for the radio plays we studied the old recordings of Abbott and Costello and have had Zoom visits from ABC Radio National Fictions program presenter Fiona Pepper,” Dr Lorenza says.

“The radio plays range from a haunted house mystery to the inner monologues of everyday characters living through the pandemic.”

Tune in for more info on the Con’s Facebook.