Of all the sayings that remark on the theatre, “The show must go on” may strike closest to the essence of the art.  One might even say that the theatre is at its best when forced to persevere.

Such was certainly the case with the Barnard Theatre Department’s December 2020production of Aaron Posner’s Stupid F*cking Bird.  Beautifully adapted from Chekhov’s The Seagull, “SFB” interrogates the questions of family, loyalty, and, most importantly, what it means to build and break the performer-spectator relationship in the theatre.

The only problem: we didn’t have a theatre.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in the spring of my junior year at Columbia, we were all sent home for what would become a long year of Zoom and tracking time zones.  It also meant that my thesis performance in acting – the culmination of my work as a theatre major – would take place on Zoom.

The news was disappointing, of course, but where one door closes, another opens: we found ourselves among the first to explore the possibilities of a new performance medium.

Not quite film, not quite theatre, Zoom certainly presented its challenges, not the least of which being subject to the mercy of spotty internet connections to keep us in real-time connection despite having never gathered in a physical space.

We could not have asked, however, for a better cast and crew to tackle a fully remote production.  Everyone brought their all to every single moment of the process, and we played “live” (for me, to my laptop in an empty house 3000 miles from where I thought I would be) to a virtual audience who poured their appreciation and love for our work into chats, emails, and reviews.