Student Blogger: Angela LaRose

We love you, Class of 2021! It's your turn to shine!!! a??a??a??a??a??a??a??

Being a senior theatre major with only a few performance-based classes on my docket, (one being our showcase which was inevitably and indefinitely postponed), I began to question how this transition was impacting the students of the classes below me. I interviewed one student from each class to see how their educational experience has been impacted, and to parse out the feelings these changes have evoked.

While everyone's technological abilities certainly may vary, all performing arts students- theatre majors, dance majors, and design technology majors alike, are now facing the additional struggle of completing their theatre education from the comfort of their own homes. Many facets of each of these performance divisions are simply not as teachable or as attainable when students and teachers cannot be in the same room, working off the energy that physical presence supplies.

Each year at DeSales University, the class of graduating seniors has the incredibly unique opportunity of taking on, first-hand, the task of uniting as their own theatre company to produce a children's show, building everything from the ground up. Nearly a year ago, my class started to gather (sometimes at unmentionable hours) to choose our show, as well as vote on which members of our class would make up the fabulous production team. For our capstone project, we, rather unanimously, landed on The Jungle Book, and the planning began!