With the outbreaks of COVID-19 starting in March, schools all across the world went into a virtual environment. Many classes that were traditionally in-person, had to deal with a new situation.

One of these classes is theater- since going virtual, many of the students enrolled have had a five month long dry streak of not having performed. A multitude of students were impacted by the forced virtual learning, such as senior Lidia Mazza, who has been in the varsity theater classes since their sophomore year, and participated in every show since their freshman year.

“We lost out on a lot of stuff.” Mazza said. “Our competition season was cut short, we didn’t have our musical or ceremonies that we have every year, we couldn’t put on Senior Directeds, so all of that was a little bit sad.”

 However, there does seem to be hope. In years prior, the theatre department has put on a play by William Shakespeare in preparation for several different competitions, but this year, many things are changing. The theatre department has decided to take this show in a whole new direction, by implementing a theme in lieu of a whole play.

 “Over the course of the summer we’ve been able to do a 360,” Mazza said.  “This year we have a theme, ‘Nightmare.’ Everyone in the JV and varsity classes are choosing a monologue, a song or creating a short film that is based on the theme.”

 Accompanying this change in performance, the theatre department has transitioned to a platform better suited for the social-distancing world we seem to have found ourselves in.  They are putting on a show completely virtually, while utilizing a platform called show4tix.com,

 “People are going to buy tickets online,” Mazza said. “They’ll be sent a link and from there,  [everything is] going to be spliced together. It will then be broadcasted at a certain time to the people who bought their tickets.”