UFV’s upcoming production of Antigone will be performed over Zoom
The UFV theatre department will be performing Antigone, a Greek tragedy adapted and directed by Shelley Liebembuk, in November. The Cascade sat down with Liebembuk, assistant professor in the theatre department, to discuss Antigone and how the production is adapting to COVID-19.
How did you become interested in adapting and directing Antigone?
The idea behind doing Antigone, for me, is that it still resonates with our time. It’s about a young person trying to negotiate a state rule that they feel is unjust. Because it will be a Zoom performance, I’ve adapted [Antigone] into a 30-minute piece where there are only three main characters — Ismene, Antigone, and Creon. What I’ve tried to do is emphasize this question around allyship, social justice, and how to find our agency in difficult times.
How many cast and crew members are involved?
We have three student actors and five crew members. [Of the crew members], we have four students who make up the digital media team and one student who is our sound designer … I think a lot of the roles are more intertwined than usual.
So, how exactly will Antigone be performed? Are all the actors in their own homes in front of their own screens?
We’re going to be using [Zoom] webinar, so our sense of audience is quite detached. The Zoom webinar platform allows us to control which panels, and in what way, the audience is watching it. The audience will be invited as an “attendee,” and they won’t have the ability to turn on their video. Some of the panels will constitute the actors, and some panels will have visual projections. The actors will be performing live to the audience — nothing will be edited and nothing will be pre-recorded. However, it is a fun challenge for all of us to figure out how to stage things, how to hold attention, how to combine the panels of actors with panels that might have projections or other scenography.
You’ll see the actors in their real spaces [at home], but there’ll be moments when those real spaces will be layered with virtual scenography. Our digital media team is creating original virtual backdrops that we can layer onto the performer’s spaces. What the audience will be treated to is a mix of something that looks like a Zoom conference call and something that has those magical, theatrical scenography elements.
Especially because our audience and ourselves are all negotiating Zoom fatigue … part of our challenge is to reconfigure it in an artistic way. We’re often using [Zoom] in a very mundane, passive way. How can we rethink our relationship to the screen? [We want to] invite our audience to a new experience of sitting in front of a screen that doesn’t look like television or film — to theatricalize this space.
Do you think that this will change the way that people perform? After COVID-19, do you think things will keep evolving [in a virtual technology sense] or go back to the way things were?
Many theatre troupes around the world have moved to Zoom and other platforms in order to perform work right now. [UFV] is not alone in experimenting with this. I think an important element here is that this is not a choice coming only out of experimentation; it’s a choice coming out of necessity.
I believe that we’re going to see more [digital technology] once we’re allowed to return to a live audience. People will become more comfortable with these technologies. If you look at the history of theatre, shifts in technology have always [changed] what theatre looks like. At the same time, there is a big desire to return to [regular performances]. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a return to intimate performances and one-on-one performances.
It will definitely inform the way I direct shows once we go back to a more traditional theatrical space because of how you’re thinking about composition, interaction, and embodiment. Those are always questions in the work of a director, and the virtual pivot adds a different layer of awareness to all of those.
What are some of the changes that come with socially distanced rehearsals and performances?
From auditions to rehearsals to performance, everything is happening with each person discretely in their own homes in front of a computer screen. Some of the actors and crew I’ve never met in person. Obviously, that’s a new challenge.
But we already have our full set, right from the get-go. We know that this Zoom platform is our stage. We are already composing this piece and [working with] how we frame the actors and how to act on camera. We’re working on virtual scenography, from Snap Cam to creating different virtual backgrounds, props, and costume pieces. All of it is playing with the fact that we are using this medium, and we’re not trying to make it look like an in-person production.
We also get to see a lot of people’s pets that want to come on camera! You usually don’t get to be in someone’s personal space.
Is there anything else you would like to say about the theatre department?
Our theatre department is committed to inviting students to get involved and learn those skills through the practice of it. In this unique time, and now that the winter semester is remote, we will again have a winter remote production. I invite students who are interested in digital media, virtual scenography, sound and lighting, and actors to find new ways of working. If I didn’t think that a remote production would allow the students to gain these skills, I wouldn’t want to be involved in it. But I’m very excited to see what the students are able to do and create.
Antigone will be performed Nov. 25-27 at 7 p.m. and Nov. 28 at 2 p.m. For more information, students can visit the UFV Theatre website.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Antigone Poster. (UFV School of Creative Arts)
Danaye studies English and procrastination at UFV and is very passionate about the Oxford comma. She spends her days walking to campus from the free parking zones, writing novels she'll never finish, and pretending to know how to pronounce abominable. Once she graduates, she plans to adopt a cat.
