Everyone stayed home from March 2020 until September 2021 due to the pandemic, leaving artists and audiences normally huddled together for indoor events to connect strictly through the diligence and invention of technology-driven producers.
When it came to theater and opera, that meant companies and individuals crafting online-only work available to stream on-demand. Both makers and takers weren’t seeking to replicate the in-person interaction of live and onstage theater. Though innovative, virtual theater life was, at first, a placeholder for the real thing, the in-the-flesh thing.
So now that live, on-stage theater is allowed, and companies and audiences are gathering together masked and vaxxed, why are two of Philly’s most notable stage producing companies — Opera Philadelphia and 1812 Productions — still presenting virtual works?
Opera Philadelphia’s world premiere digital opera, “TakTakShoo,” from Philadelphia-based composer Rene Orth and Toronto librettist Kanika Ambrose (starting Nov. 19) features mezzo Kristen Choi and four dancers. Along with its rich tale of motherhood (both women are new moms), TakTakShoo is as influenced by the sense of renewal that life post-Covid brings as it is by K-Pop’s zealous musical style.
At a time when most companies are chomping at the bit to get back on stage, Orth said the digital realm, for a composer, opens the world to her voice.
“One of the best things about creating digital productions means I can share it with friends and family around the world in the form that it is intended to exist,” she says. “Digital works can reach audiences that have never set foot in an opera house or attended anything put on by an opera company. We’re just getting started on the possibilities of digital opera. I hope Opera Philadelphia will continue to pave the way with more.”
Orth said the process for creating physical as opposed to virtual work is radically different.
“Musically, everything has to be set once in production: no workshops, no rewrites once we move to film. For TakTakShoo, our mezzo-soprano, Kristen Choi, recorded vocal lines that I wrote onto her phone. I was able to take those recordings, play with electronic effects, and in turn, provide a temporary fully-produced version so everyone on the project knew what the piece sounded like before we started filming.”
Meeting at 2018’s LibLab residency (“a speed-dating process, pairing composers and librettists to write with a very fast turnaround”) Orth and Ambrose built a story combining a variety of musical influences (“I love the unpredictability in K-Pop composition”) and made certain that the notion of new motherhood was apparent in the musical process that blasts through on TakTakShoo.
“I’ve learned to work more in my head while rocking a baby to sleep or watching Peppa Pig with my toddler,” says Orth. “Sometimes if I’m humming a musical idea out loud, my toddler will surprise me and finish the phrase. It’s nice to have some affirmation from a tiny human that I’ve written an earworm. “
The earworms of parenting figure prominently and comedically in Jen Childs and Scott Greer’s autobiographical “Two Outta Three” from 1812 Productions. Only here, as created and performed by married Philadelphia theater artists, childhood is observed on the way out the door as Two Outta Three examines their daughter going off to college, and Childs and Greer re-discovering homelife’s new rhythm.
“Though we don’t reference COVID, this is a pandemic piece in that this – saying goodbye to our daughter – was the major life event that Scott and I went through,” says Childs. “Launching her into her next phase of life meant that we had to search for our next act, that of being a ‘double’ rather than a trio for 18 years. What does it mean to go back to that double act, and can we still be who we were before we had our daughter?”
Childs states that with Two Outta Three, she and Greer did a lot of laughing, as well as a lot of crying, together. And Childs, who often writes 1812’s theater pieces alone, welcomes collaboration, and she claims that she and Greer wrote this new comedy on their feet, and in an improvisational style.
“We wrote this the way we parent – we talk, argue, go back-and-forth, then find our way,” she says.
Along with conveying a giddy, emotional, and unique look at empty nesting, Two Outta Three is equally quirkily distinctive in its production – a hybrid live-in-person event at Plays & Players Theatre (Nov. 19-21) and a digitally captured production online (Dec. 6-19).
“We remade our 2021-2022 season 75 times before we announced because we wanted to see how our audiences were feeling about being in person,” says Childs, 1812’s producing artistic director, before mentioning how most theater audiences, across the country, skew to an older demographic. “1812 was aching to be in-person, especially as a comedy theater company used to working off laughs but understand any trepidation on behalf of the audience.
“We did a crowd survey in September, and were struck by how over half of the respondents claimed they weren’t ready to comeback to in-person theater. So, after a year of doing a virtual theater, and missing the interaction of live audiences, we figured we’d dip our toe in, ever-so-slightly, with live audiences, first, then an at-home viewing option. We want to allow the audience in the room to enjoy THAT, while offering something for at-home viewing. Being online opened up 1812’s offerings to the world. We got better and more confident at presenting theater, virtually. We’re happy to continue that, even though we can’t wait to get on stage full time.”
