Rehearsal during lockdown and the creative potential it brings
Updated / Friday, 30 Apr 2021
14:00
Colm Mac Con Iomaire plays the violin while students Leanne Anderson and Sarah Dooley perform to Emer s Dream inside the Quadrangle Building at NUI Galway. Photo: Aengus McMahon.
ehearsal during lockdown is not only possible, it s full of creative potential.
If the only point of rehearsal was to practice lines and gestures, then actors would have embraced video-calling in their pajamas long ago. Yet all who rehearse during Covid-19 agree that physicality and presence are vital to the creative spark of theatre.
While confronting the challenges and opportunities of rehearsing under Covid-19, myself and my peers in Drama and Theatre Studies at NUI Galway created a performance in response to the testimonies of the Tuam Oral History Project. I led two rehearsals: one over the digital space and one physically distanced.