All of Sonoma State has been severely impacted by the coronavirus. From students having to move home to teachers suddenly needing to learn how to move into the digital classroom every department has had struggles of their own. The Theatre Arts department had been working on Tartuffe, a French comedy from the 1600s by Moliere, that was canceled due to the virus. 

“Well, we had a ten-week rehearsal process. I think we were five weeks into it. You know, the whole play was staged. We had worked on choreography for some dance sequences. Most of the cast was pretty much off book and we were in the second round of rehearsing scenes and getting ready. We had already run act one once and we were about to run act two at the end of that week,” Paul Draper, the Director of Tartuffe, said when asked how far along their rehearsal process was when it was canceled by the school. 

“By the time we stopped, everybody had put in well over 90 hours… and we still had 5 weeks to go,” Draper continued, “They put in their full semester unit’s time but they didn’t get the reward. You know they got to have, um, asparagus but they didn’t get to have any ice cream.

 “To be honest I was worried about the department before COVID-19, there was a lot of in-house fighting to try and keep the program alive. With the dean making cuts to classes and shows, professors being kept out of important decisions, we were all afraid of what was going to happen, now with COVID-19 we’re still in the dark but with added stress. We’re trying to make the best of this situation but the reality is, we don’t know, and that is scary, not just for me, but for the future students. We seem to be pushing through with COVID-19 but it was very clear we have very little say what can happen,” Manny De León, an actor in Tartuffe, commented as well on his worries for the Theatre Department. 

But as all members of the theatre community know, the show must go on. 

“Now, several of the students who were in the show are graduating and going on to do other things so trying to pull that cord back together would be very difficult,” Draper later stated, revealing the ugly truth that we are losing a performance we can now never see.

 “It’s one of the great sadness’s for me. You know, sometimes I do a not so good show and it’s like you know if only this show could be canceled. But the show was going really well and for that reason it was even harder to give it up but it happens and it’s a lesson of- I’m not sure what the lesson was but it was a lesson learned.” 

The Theatre department does have plans for the future, and have been continued to work virtually.

“Currently, we’re all trying to virtually perform and create art any way we can. I’m currently working on Connection Collection, which will all be done online and from our own homes. Rehearsals have been interesting, we all sit in one zoom call and well rehearse, it’s much like a live performance and live meetings but now we have to juggle the complications of technology. It’s definitely going to be an educational experience,” De León later states. 

The Connection Collection will be a collection of scenes filmed and directed from home by students. Each scene is unique and has its own characters and stories but by the end they are all tied together in one big story about human connection and how to connect in the world we are living in today. 

Every one of us is going through a time of uncertainty here at Sonoma State. The best thing we can do is look at it as an opportunity to learn things we may never have without COVID-19, and even teaching other’s new ideas.