Seminole State to offer free Zoom theatre productions for Fall 2020

Photo: The Seminole State Theatre Touring Troupe held virtual shows over the summer. The virtual format will continue for the Center for Fine and Performing Arts 2020-21 season.

No one has been as resilient as the faculty, staff and students of Seminole State College of Florida’s Center for Fine and Performing Arts. The center was forced to relocate its programs due to the sudden closure of their building and then had to transition their classes with the rest of the College to go remote in the face of the coronavirus. They have remained remote during the Fall 2020 semester for the safety of their students, but as the saying goes, the show must go on! The center is putting on six performances that will be performed via Zoom unless otherwise noted. No ticket purchase is required, and links to the shows will be available on the center’s Facebook page.

‘Essential Stories’

Oct. 1, 7 p.m.
Directed by Seminole State Professor of Theatre Niki Salamon, the center will kick off its season with “Essential Stories.” The play, written by Seminole State theatre students, is a collection of monologues and stories based on real-life accounts across the world during the pandemic. The virtual premier event will be available to watch on the center’s YouTube channel.

Amplify!

The Center for Fine and Performing Arts is featuring the Amplify! Week in October. After the murder of George Floyd, a call arose across the nation to amplify Black voices in the arts. The center, in partnership with Seminole State’s Joint Action Committee on Race and Social Justice answers this call the week of Oct. 26 – 30 presenting “Parallel Lives;” “Hands Up 7 Playwrights, 7 Testaments” and “Remembering: Identity and Representation in the Arts.”

• ‘Parallel Lives’

  Oct. 27, 2 p.m.
  Oct. 29, 7 p.m.
  Beverly, who is White and Bill, who is Black, grew up in the same Florida town during segregation. Both responded to a request for essays in the 1990s about their experiences. They became touring partners and close friends. As their love, respect and understanding of each other deepened, they understood even more about how their parallel lives had informed their own biases and struggles. Playwrights Beverly Coyle and Bill Maxwell will be present and will respond during the Q&A period following the performances.

• 'Hands Up 7 Playwrights, 7 Testaments’

  Oct. 28, 2 & 7 p.m.
  In light of the police shootings of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and John Crawford III in Beavercreek, Ohio, among others, The New Black Fest commissioned seven emerging Black playwrights to write 10-15-minute monologues that explore their feelings about the well-being of Blackness in a culture of institutional profiling.

• ‘Remembering: Identity and representation in the Arts’

  An interview with Collin Edouard, Seminole State alumnus and Gates Scholar 
  Oct. 30, Noon
  Collin Edouard was born in Brooklyn, New York, moved to Florida and attended Lake Mary High School. He then attended Seminole State College, studying music, and is now an adjunct professor at Seminole State. He holds two master’s degrees in music and music education, one from Teacher's College at Columbia University and one from Cambridge University. He was a 2019 Gates Scholar. Each summer in the last few years, Edouard, through the organization Flying Carpet, has taught music to children in Kampala, Uganda, and refugees from Syria. His focus is on music pedagogy, which embraces racial and ethnic identity and heals the trauma that can be caused when one's history is erased and unexamined. 

‘Five Women Wearing the Same Dress’

Nov. 16 & 18, 7 p.m.
During an ostentatious wedding reception at a Knoxville, Tennessee, estate, five reluctant, identically clad bridesmaids hide out in an upstairs bedroom, each with her own reason to avoid the proceedings below. They are Frances, a painfully sweet but sheltered fundamentalist; Mindy, the cheerful, wise-cracking lesbian sister of the groom; Georgeanne, whose heartbreak over her own failed marriage triggers outrageous behavior; Meredith, the bride's younger sister, whose precocious rebelliousness masks a dark secret; and Trisha, a jaded beauty whose die-hard cynicism about men is called into question when she meets Tripp, a charming bad-boy usher to whom there is more than meets the eye. As the afternoon wears on, these five very different women joyously discover a common bond in this wickedly funny, irreverent and touching celebration of the women's spirit.

‘Spoon River Anthology’

Dec. 9 & 10, 7 p.m.
In “Spoon River Anthology,” the American poet Edgar Lee Masters (1869–1950) created a series of compelling free-verse monologues in which former citizens of a mythical Midwestern town speak touchingly from the grave of the thwarted hopes and dream of their lives. First published in book form in 1915, the Anthology was the crowning achievement of Masters' career as a poet, and a work that would become a landmark of 20th-century American literature. In this production, we invite students, faculty and staff to perform monologues as well as musical numbers to accompany these beautiful miniature stories.