A Mountain of Firsts
Show Poster for Bruised & Brave, University of Nevada, Reno. Image/Courtesy of Kasey Graham.
By Kasey Graham
As a theatre director, I’m accustomed to new beginnings. The business is marked by first readings, first rehearsals, and first night performances. In school I was trained to embrace the unknown and find the excitement in starting over. But nothing in my training prepared me for what 2020 had in store. In March, every theatre in the country closed their doors as the nation, and most of the world, felt the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Like many Americans, theatre people found themselves scrambling to make ends meet in the face of their industry closed for the foreseeable future. This most certainly was not the kind of new beginning any of us were ready for. It was in the midst of this uncertainty I found myself moving from New York to Nevada to begin a new position as the area head for the Musical Theatre program at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR). As a first-time teacher in a new program, I was standing at the foot of a mountain of firsts.
The week before fall semester classes began, the musical theatre program had to cancel its scheduled show. We hustled to put together a new production, something that could be shown virtually for safety reasons. A filmed and streamed project would be a major first for the department. We were determined to embrace the online nature of the production and create something that would succeed because of its virtual presentation, rather than despite it. Together with CJ Greer, the music director, Nate Hodges, the choreographer, and Adriano Cabral, the intimacy director, we conceived and put together Bruised & Brave, a musical revue exploring the mental health issues facing our students, faculty, and community in 2020.
Tackling this project in the time of COVID-19 meant a series of firsts for the musical theatre program at UNR: our first virtual auditions, the first project with new safety protocols, and the first time working with a professional recording studio and film crew. Each of these new experiences stretched our students’ creativity, strengthened their professionalism, and led to new beginnings and collaborations for our musical theatre program.
One major aspect of the theatre profession that has been forever changed by COVID-19 is the audition process. In the past, the vast majority of casting was done in person, with recorded submissions making up only a small fraction of the casting equation. Moving forward, virtual and recorded auditions will play a significantly larger role. The Musical Theatre department at UNR embraced this shift head-on and held virtual auditions the first week of classes. Students uploaded their preliminary audition selections, which the creative team viewed and adjudicated. Callbacks were held synchronously over Zoom.
Once the company of actors was assembled, we immediately dove into rehearsals. The rehearsal process for Bruised & Brave was a new experience for us all. Preliminary vocal rehearsals were held over Zoom, with our music director, CJ Greer, going over each song with the company. When it came time for ensemble numbers, patience and creativity were the words of the day. Singing together online is a near-impossible task, but our students persevered with dedication and humor. With the beautiful autumn weather in Reno, we were sometimes able to gather in an outdoor courtyard, distanced and masked. Those students who were not comfortable coming to campus or who had COVID-19 exposure concerns, stayed home and Zoomed into these rehearsals. Making music in 2020 was not for the undetermined or unimaginative. With the safety of students and faculty as our primary concern, we did not allow anyone in rehearsals whose attendance was not required.
Our choreographer, Nate Hodges, began with Zoom rehearsals as well. Having taught online for much of the spring semester, he was adept at this new way of teaching movement. When the time came for in-person rehearsals, extra care and precaution was taken to ensure distance was maintained in rehearsals and in the staging. The choreography was tailor-made for the dancers to maintain six feet or more of distance and to minimize movement through each other’s space.
Recording the audio for Bruised & Brave was another first for our department but will definitely not be a last. Because singing is high on the list of virus-spreading practices we knew we needed to have students lip sync to pre-recorded tracks of themselves while filming. We did not, however, know how time-consuming recording these tracks would be in the era of COVID-19. To adhere to studio safety guidelines, we never had more than three singers in the studio at a time, spaced out with Plexiglas between them. This meant that any ensemble song had to be recorded in multiple shifts. Learning to put music together in this fashion was an invaluable experience for our students and taught them to become better listeners and more attentive musicians. It was exciting to watch them learn to work with professional engineers, a skill they can take with them into the profession.
Working on camera with a film crew was another new experience for the department. It was incredibly fulfilling to team up with Loaded TV of Reno to collaborate on Bruised & Brave. The students were sponges during every day of filming. I wanted each song in the revue to be its own piece, utilizing a location that worked for that particular character and material. This meant a few numbers were filmed by students in their homes, but a majority of the songs were filmed in locations throughout Reno by the professional crew. Observing the CDC recommendations on safety, we filmed in several outdoor spaces and large well-ventilated indoor venues. Locations included a colorfully be-muraled ally in downtown Reno, a quiet side street tucked off the highway, a spacious skywalk and courtyards on campus, and the Redfield theatre, the department’s largest theatre space. Each location informed how the actors approached and connected to the individual songs.
Bruised & Brave was a mountain of firsts and new beginnings for the musical theatre department at UNR, and we will carry forward what we learned into future productions. We will continue to explore collaborations between local professionals and our students. The world is becoming smaller by the day and the theatre industry is no exception. One of the most rewarding aspects of creating Bruised & Brave was being able to share the production with audiences beyond the Reno area. This will be something we will continue to pursue as the program grows and evolves. Producing virtual theatre is a new facet of UNR’s burgeoning musical theatre program, one that is only just beginning.
Photo/Kasey Graham.
Kasey RT Graham is a director, music director, writer, and arts educator. Broadway and touring credits include Associate/Resident Director for the Broadway revival of On the Twentieth Century, Associate /Resident Director for the US and Australian tours of Dirty Dancing, Resident Director for the national tour of The Phantom of the Opera, and Associate Director for Me and My Girl at New York’s City Center. Directing credits include Daddy Long Legs (San Antonio Public Theatre), Guys and Dolls, Wait Until Dark, Grease (TexArts Theatre), Into the Woods, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Songs for a New World, (Pennsylvania Centre Stage), Pump Boys and Dinettes, The Wizard of Oz (Coeur d’Alene Summer Theatre), Scrooge, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor® Dreamcoat, Damn Yankees (Spokane Civic Theatre), and Sylvia (The Theatre Barn). As a music director he conducted the national tours of Oklahoma!, The Producers, The Wizard of Oz, and Spring Awakening. He is a proud graduate of Whitworth University (BA – Theatre), and Penn State University, MFA in Directing for the Musical Theatre Stage - University Scholar, Medal for Creative Achievement. He is the author of Small Talk: 1000 bits of stuff and nonsense and has written a number of films, including The Sky’s the Limit and Funeral Crashers. He is the area head for the Musical Theatre program at the University of Nevada, Reno.
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