thesis-show

Sitting inside the dark black box theater is a simple wooden structure—the bones of the house. Over the course of one weekend, this house will hold religious icons, a moonlit window, and the ghosts of women sacrificed in Greek mythology as three different stories come to life.

The spoken-word poets in the back of The Hungarian Pastry Shop are organizing a Marxist revolution. On the other hand, the elite members of the Saint Anthony Hall fraternity are reminiscing about their golden days that were once filled with champagne and cocaine. Meanwhile, AJ, an ambitious economics major, is stuck in the middle of their hilariously pretentious feud.

Since 1894, The Varsity Show has brought laughs to Columbia students, faculty, alumni, parents, and Morningside Heights residents by satirizing life at Columbia. With tickets sold out each night at Roone Arledge Auditorium, the shows featured hilarious plots complemented by coordinated choreography and staging, intense lighting, elaborate set design, and a live pit orchestra. This year’s show, however, will be much different.

While the curtains remain closed, stage lights off, and plush seats empty, Columbia’s theater groups will not stay silent this fall. Through an array of festivals, cabaret performances, mainstage productions, and even a radio show, performance groups are coming together virtually to bring theater to the Columbia community from across the world.

After the University transitioned to online learning, many seniors majoring in visual arts struggled to adapt their practices to home settings that lacked the equipment and studio space they relied on at Columbia.

The Ronettes’ “Be My Baby” lyrics light up the bottom of the screen. Shadow puppets pack a suitcase. Johann Strauss takes over for Vera Lynn in a Doctor Strangelove-inspired closing montage. Sprawled across YouTube, Facebook, and Zoom, this is interdisciplinary theater at its most inventive.

Following the move to virtual learning and the cancellation of activities on campus in March, student theater groups were forced to cancel or postpone their productions to the following semester. But as the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases rises to nearly 170,000 in New York and the University weighs whether to restart in-person classes in the fall, performing arts groups on campus are struggling to plan for the future.

As an art form, theater is defined by hands-on collaboration, the thrill of live performance, and the real-time connections that audiences forge with the actors and the story onstage. None of those defining elements of theater seem feasible in the age of social distancing. Still, Columbia and Barnard’s theater department faculty never considered canceling the senior thesis festival for directing students.

The cast and crew of the 126th Annual Varsity Show hosted the West End Preview for an intimate audience in the Glicker-Milstein Theatre. This year, it was all about Bacchanal.

As the Latin music faded out and the lights were dimmed, audience members blew into multicolored whistles and screamed in anticipation. Green light flooded the stage and dancers in gold skirts struck their first pose.