By Cara Coombs and Mia Hipwood
This semester, the Minarets drama program is performing a digital radio play of the classic holiday tale It’s a Wonderful Life, set to open in mid-December. Traditionally, the program performs a winter musical and spring play but has switched things up to accommodate using a digital platform.
It’s a Wonderful Life was chosen because the play presents an aspect of hope within it, a very relevant topic considering certain circumstances. Drama Club president and senior Johanna Ziegler says, “By choosing It's A Wonderful Life, we can tap into that holiday spirit that’s always at a high around December. A lot of families are in the mood for a feel-good, Christmas-esque show, and It's a Wonderful Life provides that.”
To accomplish an online play, the drama program elected to present the show in the form of a radio play. In a radio play, only actors’ voices can be heard, meaning the main focus of the show is the voice acting since there are no costumes or props in use. Drama teacher Kayla West explained, “We will be recording the students’ vocal performances and will edit it all together to air it as if it were a radio play being broadcast in the 1940s. Even though this seems a bit ‘old school,’ the students found this to be a fun, fresh take. We will strip away a lot of the design elements but will really focus on voice acting and even some foley artistry (the art of creating sound effects from scratch). Once the recording is all edited together we will air the performance through a streaming service called Showshare.”
This year’s performance of It’s A Wonderful Life marks the first-ever radio play that Minarets drama has produced and heralds an exciting new expansion of the program.
Comments