Grande Prairie Live Theatre actors perform "Ben & Bea: A Distancing Office Romance", a scoially distanced adaptation of the play Much Ado About Nothing (Photo: Youtube / Derek Hall)

By Shane Clausing

Grande Prairie Live Theatre

Grande Prairie Live Theatre actors turn to Zoom to perform play

Apr 20, 2020 | 7:26 PM

With stage performances put on hold by the COVID-19 pandemic, actors at the Grande Prairie Live Theatre have found a way to bring the stage online and at a physical distance.

Shakespeare’s comedy Much Ado About Nothing was set to open at GPLT last month, but COVID-19 postponed that date.

Since that time, the cast and crew had been waiting and wondering what’s next after they had been rehearsing the play for months.

The group of actors then decided that they didn’t want all of their hard work to go to waste, so they decided to get innovative and try and do the play on Zoom, a virtual meeting platform, to practice from home for when the theatre would once again open.

“When we didn’t know where (the play) was going to go, we decided to do a quick ‘Zoom line run’ just to stay fresh,” said Derek Hall, an actor in the production. “As we were doing it, we were noticing the contrast between the classical poetic language and the Zoom technology was really interesting. So, we thought ‘What would that look like if we adapted the show to the format?’”

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With that, the crew has decided to perform an adaptation of the Shakesperian play for the community through Zoom. The play Ben & Bea: A Distancing Office Romance will be cut up into 10 small scenes, which will be posted on YouTube. One episode will be uploaded each day.

Hall says the transition from stage to screen has had its challenges for the crew, though.

“It took a lot of trial and error. Playing on a screen is very different from playing on a stage. It was a bit of a learning curve and we had some hiccups along the way. Eventually, we were able to put together 10 different scenes that we think people will enjoy.”

While performing on Zoom isn’t ideal, Hall thinks that viewers will enjoy the videos.

“It’s kind of disappointing that we weren’t able to show everyone the full play. But on the other hand, it’s Shakespeare, so for a lot of people, a good two to five-minute fight is a good little entry.”

Hall adds that it might be a good idea to watch each scene over a couple of times, just to brush up on your Shaespearian language.

“Typically, it takes you five or ten minutes to get your head around the language, so I think people might want to listen to it once or twice to get used to it. I know that once they get used to it, they’ll certainly enjoy it.”

Hall says there are nine actors taking part in the production.

As of right now, the actors say they don’t know if they’ll get the chance to perform the play live. Hall adds that the Grande Prairie Live Theatre is looking at putting a plan together, but at this time they do not know.