Life upon the stage, and Zoom: theatre’s online festival

Instead of trying to amend the lengthy one-act rules for a single year, the MIFA Theatre Committee chose to create a new event, independent of the MIFA State One-Act Festival. The committee determined early that an in-person event would be nearly impossible and that schools in January and February would likely be in various stages of reopening. We challenged ourselves to create a ballot that addressed that our participants may be working in full person-to-person models, fully remote models, or hybrid models. Because preparing for a play takes so long, we began the school year with our Online Theatre Festival Event Rules and ballot ready for directors. Instead of Serious and Mainstage - MIFA offered Division 1 and Division 2 in Serious and Humorous. While everyone wished they could have participated in an in-person event, the weekend was highly successful. The committee made a very intentional decision to award all schools who made it to the MIFA Online State Festival a trophy. The Committee hopes to create a new adjudicated video-submission based event next year, but look forward to seeing everyone in person next winter.

Originally published in the MSCI Year in Review, May 2021.