By Seychelle La Plante
Theater, Dance, and Music at UC Santa Barbara have persisted through the COVID-19 pandemic with a common strength: creativity.
Theater and Dance department chair Irwin Appel, UCSB Dance Company director Delilah Moseley, and UCSB Gospel Choir director Victor Bell recently spoke at a Humanities and Fine Arts Division event HFA Speaks: Arts Evolving in a Pandemic, to discuss how the arts have changed, struggled, and adapted throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
Victor Bell, Professor of Music and leader of the UCSB Gospel Choir since 1998, talked about the challenges of adapting Gospel Choir to remote learning.
English student Amelia Faircloth engaged the panel in lively conversation in her role as a web and social media intern for the division.
“How do you wear a mask and sing and learn at the same time?” Bell said while discussing the challenge of teaching a choir wearing masks. This was one of the questions Bell asked himself with the return to on-campus learning this past fall quarter.
Remote learning also came with its own set of challenges for the music department. By navigating these challenges with a lot of trial and error, Bell successfully taught music and presented virtual events with the Gospel Choir during the pandemic. The advice from a mentor that has led him through it all has been: “Make it work.”
Irwin Appel, Professor of Theater and Chair of the Department of Theater and Dance at UCSB, discussed the innovative adaptations his department made to host production on Zoom.
Irwin Appel, artistic director of the Naked Shakes company, has staged both virtual and outdoor theater performances during the pandemic.
In the face of the pandemic, according to Appel, the motto of the Theater and Dance department became “out of adversity comes opportunity.” For the Theater program, Zoom evolved from a challenge into a new medium to express theatrical creativity.
“One of the great achievements that we did in the early part of the pandemic was our LAUNCH PAD new play development program created Alone Together, which commissioned playwrights to write short plays specifically for Zoom,” Appel said.
Delilah Moseley, director of the UCSB Dance Company, reflected on the return to in person perfomances.
Director of UCSB’s Dance Company, Delilah Moseley, saw the creative opportunity during the pandemic to create a film. The company produced the film In Flight and On Film, which premiered on Zoom in April 2021. Moseley came to realize more than ever through teaching dance remotely how much the art form truly requires physical space and togetherness.
She got emotional discussing the first dance show back in person that took place in December at the Hatlen Theater. The reaction of the audience “was a roar,” said Moseley. “It was unbelievable. I have never experienced that in all my years in the theater.”
All three panelists agreed it is undeniably important for the performing arts to be able to stage in-person events, interacting live with each other and with audiences. “As a culture and as a society, we are never going to not need that,” said Appel.
Each panelist has come out of the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic with a greater appreciation for the arts at UCSB and beyond. “One of the things this pandemic has taught us as humans is we need each other, we feed off each other,” said Bell.
To view the talk in its entirety, please click on the video below:
Seychelle La Plante is a third-year communication major at UC Santa Barbara. She wrote this piece for her Writing Program class, Digital Journalism.