Kenan Theatre Company, Company Carolina look ahead to fall 2020 season

After the rest of the spring season was canceled for UNC theater companies due to COVID-19, students are looking ahead to the fall. 

Kenan Theatre Company, an undergraduate production branch of the department of dramatic art, has its full 2020-2021 season planned. Company Carolina, a student-run company, has announced its first fall play. Other student-run companies, such as The LAB! Theatre  and UNC Pauper Players, are reviewing proposals for next season.

Sophomore Ava Pukatch is a producing director at KTC. KTC’s first show of the season, “Kemps,”will be the 2020 Lillian Chason production, in honor of Lillian Chosen, a student who died in 2009. 

“The playwright is going to be working with us on the production to tailor it to a UNC audience,” Pukatch said. “So that’ll be a cool experience to work with a playwright on the production.”

KTC’s second fall play, “Stupid Fucking Bird,” will be directed by Dramatic Art Professor Greg Kable. The play is an adaption of "The Seagull” by Anton Chekhov, and is set to open right before Thanksgiving.

“Iphigenia 2.0” is the first fall play for Company Carolina. Directed by junior Kathryn Brown, the show was originally supposed to open in early April. 

“It’s a show I’ve been passionate about for about five years now,” Brown said. “It’s a play about autonomy, about political rhetoric, about the dichotomy between genders, and about what happens when the war front and the home front collide. It’s a commentary on the horrors of war and the inherent misogyny that comes with being a patriot.”

Hannah James is the director of operations for Company Carolina. James described “Iphigenia 2.0” as a “movement play.”

“‘Iphigenia 2.0' has choreography in it, and usually choreography is structured for musicals,” James said. 

About half of the cast of “Iphigenia 2.0” were part of the senior class, Brown said. Returning actors will keep their parts, and auditions will be held for the remaining roles. One such role is the choreographer. 

“When you have a new choreographer, the style of the movement, the intention behind the movement, the storytelling — a lot of things change in the process,” Brown said. “My vision for the show doesn’t necessarily change, but the way in which I pursue that vision and how I enact that vision will change with new people.”

Despite the spring season being cut short, theater students are keeping their spirits up. 

“We usually have theater awards at the end of the semester,” James said. “But because we can’t do that physically, we’re trying to make a fun online video of all the shows that happened this school year so we can still look forward to that in the quarantine and have a way to appreciate everything that we’ve done this year.”

Directors and actors are optimistic for next season, both in the quality of shows and the participation from students. 

“I think theater next year is going to come back with a new fire under its ass with this new passion and this new invigoration for material and for art and for collaboration,” Brown said. “I think people are really going to show up more in the fall and the spring next year for being a part of shows because now they haven’t had that opportunity to have those creative outlets, so they’re going to be looking for that.”

@ejgerden

arts@dailytarheel.com