Even through a pandemic, Green Room is able to work hard to bring the fall play to life. 

The show started back with auditions the week of September 21. They tried to do in-person auditions, but water problems at the school kept them from that. Green Room ended up doing the fall play auditions over a Zoom meeting. 

“Different people kind of just read through the different parts. It went fine, but the only thing I regret is that I couldn’t really see a couple people together,” said show director Clare McConville. 

This year’s fall play is a bunch of different mini plays in one. Each is a different mystery, which will leave the audience in suspense. There is a variety of topics throughout the entire play, such as murder mysteries, something stolen, and mistaken identities. 

“There is a little bit of variety in the shows,” McConville said.

A typical rehearsal starts off with getting temperatures taken and going through the protocol questions to make sure everyone is all healthy. The cast then sits six feet apart in the black box and maintains social distancing while on stage too. 

“You have one row in between everybody, and only two chairs you can sit on per row,” said sophomore Gus Calhoun. 

Along with regular rehearsals, the whole cast helps out with tech for the show. The cast works with our new technology director of theater, Ron Bowden, doing a variety of things for the show, including costumes, props, set, and light design. Although COVID-19 made things a little more difficult, everyone in the show works diligently to make the production run smoothly. 

“When we are in the theater working together, we did a very good job of keeping different departments separated, and all the kids were great about keeping themselves honest and separated,” said technology director Ron Bowden. 

As COVID-19 numbers in Lake County increased, the play had to be put on a temporary pause until it becomes safe for students to meet in the black box again. Those in the play definitely feel that setbacks like these are making this play a challenging process. 

“Once we got up and running and we were able to have auditions, then to have this pause that we’ve been in since October 20 is kind of frustrating because we just can’t be in person right now,” McConville said. 

When the COVID 19 numbers decrease, the students will be able to continue rehearsing for the production. They have many plans for how to stop COVID 19 from spreading during the actual performance of the show.

“Instead of having an audience in the theater, our plan is to record each of the scenes with three different camera angles, and edit it together, then release it to the community,” Bowden said.