“Come From Away” is the altogether brilliant musical based on the spirit-raising effort finessed by a small community in Newfoundland, Canada in the wake of the shocking terrorist attacks perpetrated on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.
The national tour of Come From Away makes a pandemic-delayed stop at Sarasota’s Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall, where it was first planned for the venue’s 50th season.
Walking back into the Walton Arts Center in Fayetteville on Tuesday night, Oct. 26, I could feel that I was trying to emotionally prepare myself. For what, I wasn’t entirely sure. But I knew it would be an emotional night.
It s too soon for meta-Zoom.
Feel the Spirit, the latest production from Berkeley s ever-adventurous Shotgun Players is an agonizingly of-the-moment, tailored-for-teleconferencing commission by playwright Noelle Viñas, expressly written in the form of online video chats and gatherings. The three main chatters are the new young pastor, Gabrielle (Vero Maynez) and two senior board members (Jean Forman, Fred Pitts) of a small, long-established church which has moved its services to Zoom in light of the pandemic.
An overarching theme that the trio continually returns to and one of the few they all agree on is the inability of teleconferencing to replicate the meaningful nuances of in-person conversation, let alone mass congregation of the sort one finds in both church and theater.