By Sofia Williams
News Editor
Found, an original musical revue put on by the Mira Costa Drama Department, was available for livestream on May 14, 15, 21, and 22 at 7:00 PM.
The revue is a compilation of hopeful songs from classic musicals including Annie, Dear Evan Hansen, and A Chorus Line. Each song, however, is chosen specifically for the performer singing it from hundreds of selections. According to Sofia Lanza, a Mira Costa freshman and performer in the production, this personalized experience allows the actors to deeply connect to their performance, and in turn immerse the audience in the story they are portraying.
“When they cast each person they went through and picked different songs based on who they had…it’s personalized but in a way that [the audience] can still connect to it. We perform pieces that speak to you, so [the performers] feel like it’s intended for them, but at the same time it’s intended for everyone and people can connect to it on so many levels,” Lanza said.
According to Mira Costa Drama Director Jonathan Westerberg, the revue took several hours of hard work and discussion behind the scenes. The drama department’s Spring Musical was originally intended to be a live performance of Beauty and the Beast, but after January’s second wave of Covid-19, drama teachers had to create a new production able to be performed online.
“When the second wave [of Covid-19] started picking up in the winter, there was no way we could rehearse and audition people in person by January, but our licensing for Beauty and the Beast required that we stage the show live,” Westerberg said. “Musical theater is really hard to do over Zoom because you can’t get good sound quality, so we decided to do a film.”
According to Westerberg, Found was born out of necessity, and the MCHS drama department faced challenges that plagued theatre communities in isolation all over the world. The 17 student performers were called in one by one to perform onstage, and their individual videos were photoshopped together.
“Come March of 2020, we were faced with a decision of putting everything on hold, or finding another way to continue to do theatre. We decided to do everything we’d normally do, and consider our theatrical space to be new,” Westerberg said. “There was a months-long learning curve in terms of the video and audio systems we had to use.”
Even after becoming well-versed in operating the technology necessary to put on the production, the dynamic of Zoom rehearsals was very different to what it would be in a normal school year, according to Lanza.
“I remember in the [2020] fall play, She Kills Monsters, there was such amazing unity with the cast and crew,” said Lanza. “You don’t really get that online, because everyone’s doing their own thing separately and you don’t get to see it until you see the final result.”
Leadership from Mira Costa Drama President Gabriella Papera and production stage manager Abby Taylor, the efforts of 17 cast members and several stage crew members, and the direction of teachers Jonathan Westerberg, Maddie Hutchinson, and Christopher Albrecht were all aimed towards a common goal of bringing the production to life, a task that had to be altered when Covid-19 restrictions were factored in.
“Coordinating each individual person and editing [the production] required a lot of work. [The actors] were coming in individually to film, and they would lip-synch over a vocal track that they had recorded in private, because during Covid they aren’t allowed to sing indoors,” said Mira Costa Vice Principal Daniel Pestle.
Leave a Reply