Usually in times of crisis, we turn to the artists for joy, perspective and a sense of community. Yet this pandemic has forced us to be apart. So, artists have found creative ways to work around this. You have probably seen the virtual concerts, including last weekend’s One World: Together at Home. The National Theatre in London is releasing a free live production recording every week. Andrew Lloyd Webber is doing a similar thing with his musicals. Museums and galleries the world over are creating virtual galleries and spaces. Not to mention the streaming services and podcasts that are being enjoyed with family members and friends using platforms like Netflix Party. Despite being in isolation, artists are bringing us closer together; enabling us to visit and experience places and works from around the world, together.

As is the case with almost every theatre around the world, the St Catherine’s Hall lies dormant, waiting for the pandemic to end. The cast and production team have remained very positive and optimistic about staging our Senior Musical, Freaky Friday, later this year. When this will occur remains to be finalised.

However, even though our stage remains still, we decided to be active. Rehearsals for our show have only been running virtually for a week, but it was heart-warming to hear the familiar laughter and see the creative problem-solving last Friday afternoon. We dove back into some character work, exploring dialogue and discovering new meaning in scenes. We even tried to sing through a duet using headphones to stream the backing track so as to remove the lag time on the Teams meeting, with some success.

Students in the cast have plenty of video resources to continue to working on their choreography, backing tracks for songs, as well as a new Performer Log Book, to help track rehearsal goals, improvements and areas of support – all of which can be found on the Co-Curricular@Home Performing Arts Portal page (try saying that ten times quickly!)

We have not let the virus divide us, and we are determined to emerge stronger when we finally return to the rehearsal room.

The show must go on, and go on it will.