By Shelby Brooks
The curtain has risen on Kooweerup Secondary College’s annual musical production despite Covid-19 restrictions.
This year, the school put on a virtual production of the musical Urinetown, which is a satirical comedy that follows citizens in a Gotham-like city who revolt after the government bans private toilets.
As the school’s Director of Performing Arts, David Campbell wanted to ensure the cast didn’t miss out on the opportunity to showcase their talents and hard work.
“It’s certainly not the same as doing it on stage but we did what we could with what we had,” Mr Campbell said.
He spent hundreds of hours coordinating students to record themselves at home and edited all the footage into the finished product.
Students sung to backing tracks which Mr Campbell then synced and edited together before the whole cast came online over two days of the holidays to perform their parts as best they could at home.
“We wanted to honour the work the students had put into it and have something to show at the end,“ he said.
30 students spent four months earlier in the year rehearsing for the musical, only to have lockdown put the fate of the show on hold.
“Right when the lockdown happened, we were ready to go on stage- we had finished all the dances, finished all the blocking and we were up to rehearsing with the orchestra,” Mr Campbell said.
“The choreographers had to redo everything because if you could only see shoulders up on Zoom, the original dances wouldn’t really work anymore.
“Everyone was pretty resilient and rolled with the punches and made the best of it and had a lot of fun in the process.”
Mr Campbell organised a Zoom viewing party so the students and their families could all watch the finished video together.
“I think they really loved it, we did a zoom viewing so we could all watch together with their families which was really special,” Mr Campbell said.
“It gave everyone an idea of what it would have looked like on stage.”
The video can be found on Kooweerup Secondary College’s Facebook page.
