As March of 2020 approached, the Pine View Drama Club practiced two hours each night for their upcoming production of “Mama Mia.” With three practices left to go, the club dispersed for spring break — the play never hit the stage.
Now, after a school year worth of Zoom practices, Drama Club will be airing a virtual production of “Casey at the Bat,” based on a 19th-century poem of the same title by Ernest Lawrence. Directed by twelfth-grade club president Nathalie Williams, the radio show follows the story of a crowd-favorite baseball player and his game-determining play in a local match.
Tackling a new format came with technical obstacles — timing audio cues, recording with microphones of differing quality, and finding time for the whole cast to gather on Zoom all posed challenges. The club also had to deal with low membership this year, something eleventh-grader Skyla Sheehy hopes will be remedied as pandemic issues ease.
“I think [this production] means that we are adaptable, and it means that we all still wanted to do something, and there’s still that love of drama club and the want to perform,” Sheehy, who voices the sharp-tongued girlfriend of Casey, said. “So I guess it shows that even though our numbers were dwindling, we still had enough ‘oomph’ to do something.”
The cast recorded the final, audio-only version over Zoom, which was released May 26. The show is online and free to listen to.
The cast also expressed their relief to be able to resume meetings, even virtually, last autumn.
“I was honestly just really happy they still had it, because I have a lot of friends from drama club and, again, I’m online so I don’t see them,” eleventh-grader Cassidy Park, voice of the Narrator, said. “It’s nice to have moments to see them. We did improve games before we practiced the show so it was just a good time to… enjoy drama club as much as we could with everything going on.”
Listen to Pine View Drama Club’s 2021 Virtual Show, “Casey at Bat”!