Hunching over your laptop on what seems like a Zoom call set in gallery view, the boundary between actors and audience in this year’s annual Fringe Festival slowly blurs. Seeing the Zoom squares pop up one by one, you might even begin to feel that, instead of a spectator, you are a silent participant in the play.
The Fringe Festival — a student-run production established in 2013 — aims to connect actors and audience members through performances written, directed, and performed by Choate students. The Fringe Festival has typically spanned a few nights at the end of the winter term. This year, however, the performances will be recorded and accessible on the student portal.
The switch from in-person performances to video recordings posed new challenges for the Fringe team, such as navigating technology, finding spaces suitable for recording, and maintaining video quality. The Fringe team removed all extra flourishes such lighting and sets and instead concentrated on simply depicting each story clearly through dialogue and body language alone.
Since Zoom recordings generally show only a portion of an actor’s body, actors focused primarily on conveying emotion through facial expressions. Fringe actor Austin Zhao ’23 said, “A majority of what we convey is through the body language, and it is very difficult to construct complex characters when only my face is being shown. As a result, we had to simplify some scripts to not confuse the audience.”
Logo Courtesy of The Fringe Festival 2021 Board
Stage Manager and Production Supervisor Lara Stone ’22 agreed that the challenges of acting over Zoom has pushed the actors to find creative ways in constructing their characters.
“It might be frustrating because there is so much you can’t do, but you have to look at it and think about the positive side,” Stone said. “How can you master these particular aspects and how can you most effectively illustrate your characters through certain parts of your body?”
Despite the limitations of acting on Zoom, the cast’s sense of camaraderie remained unaffected. In fact, collaboration and communication has become even more efficient through Zoom. In previous years, for example, the writers were unable to see the rehearsals that conflicted with their other commitments. This year, writers could log onto Zoom and see their scripts come alive.
In addition to the constant communication between cast members, English teacher and advisor to the Fringe Festival Board Ms. Kate Doak recognized the importance of holding regular rehearsals and having a small cast in maintaining a tight-knit community.
“It is hard to stay engaged in Zoom if we don’t meet regularly,” said Ms. Doak. “Theater for young people, especially, is about continuity and building connections between multiple shows. Having that disrupted can be jarring for performers who see theater as a way of building friendship.”
She added, “We also intentionally kept the cast small to ensure that students could know each other, and the directors, very well and feel more engaged as they are working on different pieces.”
Featuring a variety of student written artworks ranging from poetry to play to film to documentary, Fringe will be streaming on February 19.
