It can be very stressful taking classes from home. So I’ve been finding some extracurriculars for myself to stay occupied. Recently I met with a group of theatre enthusiasts from CFAN Chinese Theatre Group, a student organization of UCLA, some of whose members were also studying remotely in China due to the pandemic.
Recently, the group performed their winter production
Equus
, an adaptation of Peter Shaffer’s play, in Chinese. Having some theater experiences from high school and a strong will of devoting myself to a group, I immediately signed up for a Zoom audition slot. After sending a recording of my prepared monologue and auditioning with dialogues and monologues from the play, I got the role that attracted me the most, Dora Strang. That’s when the magic began.
Our crew included a director, an art director, two stage managers, eight actors, and around forty tech members. Before tech week, we met online three times per week, three hours each time. Luckily, we also got to meet each other in person about two times per month. The rehearsal format was straightforward. We began with warm-ups, physical and facial exercises, muscle training of the mouth and tongue, tongue twister, and vocal training that helped with our projection and articulation. Then we improvised in groups, by resolving conflicts between a certain relationship, training our listening and responding skills.
In the first couple of weeks, we mainly focused on play analysis. We did a lot of character work, filling out an ongoing file with questions related to our characters, aiming to understand them, to find the relation between ourselves and them, eventually to become them. Clarifying our objectives in each scene and filling out the gaps between scenes also helped with our acting. Additionally, the director and stage managers who played the role of dramaturgs presented theme studies on horses and religion.
In the next stage, there were blocking and polishing rehearsals, blending in a couple of run-throughs. We received feedback and notes from the director and communicated our interpretations with him. In the tech week, we met in person in a rehearsal room in the back of the theatre where we were to perform. All members were supposed to commit to rehearsing for the entire day, and there were run-throughs at the end of every day. We also designed our ensemble work together and got some final polishes. Unfortunately, we didn’t get a chance to do a dress rehearsal since the tech was still getting set right before the performance. Two performances were on March 27, 2021, with more than two hundred audience members in total, of whom most were friends and families invited by the crew.
One difficulty of having productions during the pandemic was finding rehearsal rooms in Beijing since most places still had restrictions on visitors. Also, due to the limited funding of a student organization, theater negotiation and sponsorship were tough but necessary tasks. We were sponsored by some overseas educational institutions.
After all, we were so lucky to work on this production during this uncertain time. It’s a memorable experience, especially for me, that I wouldn’t have had if not for the pandemic keeping me home. Sometimes, the memory still rushes to my mind. It struck me every time when we held each other’s hands and looked into each other’s eyes and chanted, “I see you. I see your magic. I hold your back.” My feelings were shared. Theatre has always been magical to me. This experience enriched my life during the pandemic.
