How do you teach acting and improvisation while socially distanced? How does a college put on its spring production in a time of quarantine? The Phenomenal Animals have partnered with Chesapeake College's Peake Players to present Miasma, an new digital "radio play" about three people sequestered on a sprawling ranch property at an undisclosed location somewhere on Maryland's Eastern Shore. Who are these people and why have they been separated from the rest of the world?
Using a "found sound" format in the style of The Blair Witch Project, the story follows neighbors, protesters, ranch employees, and a group of teenagers who make the fateful decision to break onto the property in the dead of night.
The cast features fifteen performers including Bri Litteral, Jon Cook, Faith Berry, Dan Rosendale, Liz Henson, Nathan Stevens, and Sean Priest.
THE PHENOMENAL ANIMALS perform original adaptations of classical works of horror, fantasy, and the occult in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC. They are artists-in-residence at Chesapeake College and have partnered with the College's theatre program in order to produce MIASMA.
A local researcher has passed digital recorders to three individuals quarantined onto a ranch somewhere on Maryland's Eastern Shore. These three seem to be at the center of a toxic miasma-a kind of diseased air that seems to only surface at night in the presence of the ranch residents. Locals are up in arms, protesting in homemade podcasts and videos. A group of teenagers attempts to make a documentary about themselves breaking onto the ranch and this becomes the catalyst for a local tragedy and regional scandal.
The Production is edited and directed by Rob C. Thompson.
Act One Now Available
Act Two Launches May 12
Videos