Devised Theatre by CofC Students to Touch on Social and Cultural Challenges

By: CofC Media

The College of Charleston’s Department of Theatre and Dance continues its season theme, “The Show Must Go On,” online as spring semester kicks off this month. “In Other Words: A Century’s Reflections,” a devised piece of pandemic theatre, is an examination on a collection of themes from pandemics to Civil Rights, and even on the nature of theatre itself. Created by a company of seven students and utilizing text derived from first person accounts, it explores the possibilities for theatre in a Zoom world and for all of us in this time of challenge.

Director and faculty member Todd McNerney shares, “It has been a long and difficult year. COVID-19 has effectively shut down the live entertainment industry. Theatre in particular has been devastatingly impacted. However, like universities around the country our program has sought to find a variety of means to still create, to still inspire, and to still educate our students in the making of theatrical art. This performance and the process used to create it provided our students the opportunity to express some of their thoughts and feelings on their world, through the voices of real people from other challenging periods over the last century. The process led them to discover that even with difference, change, or progress there are far more aspects of our humanity which we share than separates us.”

“In Other Words: A Century’s Reflections,” will be presented for free on Zoom with closed captioning, on January 29th and January 30th at 7:30 pm. Audience members are encouraged to ask students questions about their experiences at talkbacks following both performance nights (the January 29th talkback will have an ASL interpreter present).

The performance link, as well as information on forthcoming spring productions, is available at theatre.cofc.edu. For more information, call (843) 953-6306 or email cofcstages@cofc.edu.

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