SU Drama rehearses ‘On the Lake’ amid COVID-19, plans to perform in person

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Jackson Norman stood in front of the company of actors that were scattered throughout the seats in the Storch Theatre.

“Happy Friday,” he said, calling the 11-woman company to attention and signaling the start of rehearsal. For Norman, who is currently stage managing the Syracuse University Department of Drama’s production of “On the Lake” during a pandemic, it wasn’t exactly business as usual.

“It has been an exercise in flexibility and patience,” Norman said. “To walk into every day with so many unanswered questions, but knowing that, as the person leading the room, I need to keep us going and on some sort of schedule.”

Norman, an SU senior, and his classmates in the drama department have had to find ways to continue to rehearse under new restrictions, and that’s especially true for the production of “On the Lake.” Originally scheduled for last semester, the show was only a week into rehearsals when SU’s campus was shut down, halting performances indefinitely.

Performers in the SU Drama production of “On the Lake” have been rehearsing in masks and will have microphones during the performance. Anya Wijeweera | Staff Photographer

Stephen Cross and Andrea Leigh-Smith, professors in the drama department and the co-directors of “On the Lake,” were happy to have the production rescheduled after it was canceled last semester. They planned to rehearse and perform the show on the Quad as students returned to campus this semester, but SU’s guidelines for performances changed quickly, Leigh-Smith said.

When the university offered the directors the option to move back into the theater, they put it up to a company vote.

“The consensus was to move inside,” Leigh-Smith said. “Which was helpful, because it gives us a little more time (to rehearse). We never had any set (outside), and we were being bumped all over the place.”

The Storch Theatre has 200 seats, but with COVID-19 restrictions, it will only accommodate 26 audience members. The chairs inside are zip-tied, with only one of every four left open for social distancing. The set for “On the Lake,” as of last weekend, consisted of boxes, chairs and a double set of two-story-tall staircases on either side of the space, separated by a gulf of stage.

While rehearsing a particularly crowded dance number, the company paused the scene when it became clear that some actors were dangerously close to one another. Leigh-Smith, who had been conducting from the audience with grand gestures, suggested that the actors incorporate the need to avoid each other into the feeling of the piece. It took a moment, but the actors figured it out and moved on.

And while much of the time re-staging the show has been spent on spacing and sanitizing props and set pieces, Cross and Leigh-Smith are determined to hold true to the play’s central dramatic elements.

“With a dream play, you’re trying to find the balance between sense and nonsense,” Cross said. “It’s a challenge, but from the beginning, we gave ourselves the freedom to step away from naturalism and embrace the melodrama of the piece.”

During the performance, the actors will have microphones, Leigh-Smith said, but it’s the performers’ responsibility to project through their required masks during rehearsals.

Restrictions and limitations aside, Leigh-Smith said it’s important to consider the audience’s enjoyment. The team specifically chose not to produce “On the Lake” over Zoom and opted for five in-person performances on the weekend of Oct. 9. But the number of audience members who will be able to reserve tickets has not been confirmed, Leigh-Smith said.

“Theater is meant to engage and entertain and provoke,” Leigh-Smith said. “We’re trying to push the play forward, and we get stopped along the way. But we’re working with students, and we want this to be a rewarding process for them.”