In-person human connection is a defining feature of theatre, making it challenging to hold theatre events while meeting social distancing needs.
Lincoln County Onstage is trying a new method of balancing the need for human connection with COVID-19 safety concerns.
The Chandler-based theater will host its first Page + Stage Reading Group event on Zoom, 2 p.m., March 28, for free.
“We’re leaning towards the structure of a book club,” Lincoln County Onstage board member Lusetta Fennell said. “But, but it also would include scripts, as well as books or books that have been adapted for a script or play.”
The event will focus on the book and play “Of Mice and Men,” both by John Steinbeck.
The only registration needed is filling out the online form at Lincoln County Onstage’s “Page + Stage Reading Group” Facebook event page. Participants can also sign up to borrow a copy of both the book and play on the same form.
“Content wise, it is a serious, a heavy work, but it’s something that’s very relatable,” Lincoln County Onstage board president and coordinator of Page + Stage Reading Group Mandy Myers said. “It’s easy reading. And we just felt like it would be something that might resonate with a lot of people.”
The event aims to encourage participants to get involved in the discussion, so it will begin with an introduction to “Of Mice and Men.”
“What we would like to do is provide a general overview, because we don’t want this to be a hard and fast book club that you’re embarrassed to come to if you didn’t finish the work,” Myers said. “We want people to be engaged, and we want people to, to have the opportunity to ask questions, to share insights.”
The discussion will include various ways of understanding a play, including from the audience’s perspective.
“We thought this would be a great opportunity to come together with them; look at a text, both in a novel form and its transition into a stage play, and kind of look at that from a variety of different perspectives,” Myers said. “We can look at it from a director’s perspective, from an actor’s perspective, a designer’s perspective.” She said many of the themes and challenges
She said many of the themes and challenges that the characters George and Lennie face in the story are appropriate to the present day.
“George and Lennie are wrestling with disillusionment, with alienation, with family or what does or doesn’t constitute a family—Is that something you can cobble together, if you don’t have it in the traditional sense?” Myers said. “And they are pursuing as best they can the American dream of, of ownership, of place, of belonging somewhere.”
While it’s not a happy play, per se, the ending has hope, she said.
“They work to find a place that they can call their own, that they can carve out the space for themselves,” Myers said. “And it unfortunately is not the resolution that you hope for. I think what we can walk away with is that that’s a worthwhile pursuit, even if we don’t always achieve it.”
The event is expected to last about an hour.
“We’d like to work a scene or two,” Myers said, “and our participants are welcome to be the readers but we’ll also have some Onstage folks who can fill that gap, if we don’t have participants who are comfortable reading.”
The goal of working a scene during the group meeting is to give participants some insight into how a rehearsal works.
Lincoln County Onstage hopes to make the Page + Stage Reading Group a recurring event, depending on audience reception.
This Zoom event on March 28 will be the first time Lincoln County Onstage will have held a public event since the COVID-19 social distancing closures began last year.
“We’re hungry to be involved with our audience and hope that they feel the same way,” Myers said.