Under the baobab: Performing arts at Penn State and beyond persevere during a pandemic

There is a Dogon saying, “During the darkest storms there are moments of light which show us what can be, what will be.” The pandemic has forced us to shut the door on much of our lives, but people have found creative ways to survive, even thrive. Stumbling through the storm, folks have discovered innovative ways to stay on the “good foot.”

This year, the world’s largest student-run charitable event, Thon, was virtual for the first time ever. The State College Borough Council has maintained its full weekly schedule on Zoom. College and professional sports leagues have continued to perform in “bubbles” and in environments that restrict audience presence. There was a Super Bowl in a near empty stadium but was seen by over 96 million people on TV.

Performing artists were particularly creative in providing new diversions for us sheltered-in-place shut-ins. Unable to produce or rehearse live performances, Penn State’s School of the Theatre, led by Rick Lombardo and Steve Broadnax, developed a full three-show fall season. Our “The Osagie Project” was part of that effort. Because of university restrictions, the cast and production team could not occupy the same space. All rehearsals and performances were online, yet the world premiere was seen by almost 1,400 people.

Online, Professor Kikora Franklin offered dance classes for the community, the high school and the university. Richard Biever, artistic director of Fuse Productions, produced several successful online shows. Though our local State College movie houses have remained closed, Philipsburg’s Rowland Theatre screens films for the public on Fridays and Saturdays.

The Center for the Performing Arts at Penn State, soon to be headed by Sita Frederick, had an active online season. Shepherded by Amy Vashaw, collaborating with the programming associate of Jazz at Lincoln Center and The Shakes musical ensemble, CPA produced several episodes of “Meeting the Moment with Michael Mwenso,” which highlighted local and national cultural events and artists.

The most extraordinary collaboration with which I was blessed to participate was the Valentine Day’s production of “Romeo and Juliet,” involving four different directors and 44 artists from 11 countries: China, Egypt, France, India, Lebanon, Malaysia, Portugal, Russia, U.K., Ukraine, and the U.S. The project was a brain-child of the genius theater and visual artist, Ranji David. He divided the play into parts and assigned each to various directors to cast, adapt and produce according to their own artistic sensibilities. The five sections were divided according to decades of the couples lives in their 20s, 30s, 40s and older. (In these adaptations the couple both survive their suicides). The result was a bit of a hodge podge but a remarkably cohesive event seen by people around the world, literally.

I became involved when Professor Heidi Winters Vogel, an MFA graduate of the Penn State program in directing and one of the finest directors with whom I have ever worked, called me. She described the project and recruited me to play the Prince in part one. The rest of her cast was in Texas, Hawaii, Malaysia and Pennsylvania. The time zone gap was 12 hours, so we had floating rehearsal times. Some as early as 6 a.m. Our colleagues in the other sections had to overcome even more difficult barriers.

The different sections didn’t see each other’s work until the dress rehearsal, the day before the performance on Feb. 14. It was a wonder to behold. The production included hand puppets, dance, visual arts, realistic, expressionistic and even comedy. We had a 75-year-old Juliet and a female Romeo. English was the lingua franca even though it was not the first language of many of our cast.

It was a joyous jamboree, an international festival that for an hour and a half brought diverse artists together to celebrate our diversity and our unity. The pandemic wasn’t the villain but the midwife of this extraordinary event. Sheltering in place required us to think, and in this case, perform outside and inside of the “box.” Without Zoom it would have been impossible to produce a play with actors and directors from China, Russia, Ukraine and the U.S. Ranji David plans on following up this success with productions of “Othello” and “King Lear.”

When a door closes; open a window.