Community Theatre Craze - How to Perform During a Pandemic

By Draven St. George

In these tough times of a spreading pandemic, the arts are being diminished, yet the Owasso Community Theatre Company has turned this dark times and turned it into a light comedy through “Back to the 80’s”. For the past month, OCTC has been working on a comedy that will be performed on October 16 and 17 at the Owasso Redbud District. There will be four shows each night respectively at 6:00, 6:30, 7:00 and 7:30, so stop on by for a quick laugh and a good time. Brandy Peoples, the director of this hilarious show and a stage manager for many others, has had to deal with the drawbacks and hardships of performing during a pandemic, but she has persevered through and made the show into something great.

“It is a spoof of ‘Back to the Future’ where a girl goes back to the 80’s to meet her mom through a telepathic hoverboard,” Brandy said, “the play is separated into three stages, one play on each stage.” 

Even though she has had to change her routine, setting and cast due to the troubles brought up by the pandemic, she continues to stay strong.

Because of the contact of the actors onstage during the pandemic, some have had to be quarantined such as Terressa Evington, a junior at Owasso High School, who has been in multiple OCTC productions. She had to be quarantined due to one of her classmates testing positive and this would consequently become a setback for her in the show.

“I missed fitting and headshots, so I couldn’t be fit for my costumes and I couldn’t get my picture for the bio in the program” Teresa proclaimed when asked about her struggles. 

In this show, Terressa plays Bitsy, the evil villain who is considered the “dumb blonde sidekick,” so her missing those days really set her back many days in rehearsal, but she hasn’t given up. 

As Brandy Peoples put it when asked about her show, “I like a challenge.” She has continued to turn tragedy into triumph in this play and has continued to bring light and laughter to her cast and will hopefully bring that to those who come to see “Back to the 80’s” on October 16 and 17.