A faux forest expands across the stage, with cutout stems and leaves of cloth. Behind the scenes, movements are mentally rehearsed and costumes are hastily changed. The anticipation of the actors is palpable as the spotlights, seemingly hotter than the Abu Dhabi summer, hit their skin — showtime and yet they enter the stage to an empty house. Gabrielle Branche, Class of 2021, initially planned on a dance theater performance in front of a live, in-person audience, but the pandemic has made that project very difficult for her.

The Gazelle spoke with members of the Class of 2021 about their Capstones in visual arts, theater and music and how the pandemic-related restrictions have affected their projects.

Branche, an Interactive Media major, initially had a very different idea for her dance theatre piece. “I definitely expected it to be in the Mini Black Box or the Black Box, where people could come and experience it live and it would be like an immersive walk-through experience,” she explained.

The Black Box is a 333m2 performance space at the NYU Abu Dhabi Arts Center, which can be adapted in accordance with the needs of a specific performance. Due to the pandemic, the original plan to have a live performance with an audience fell through and had to be replaced with a filmed version of the piece.

“There are quite a few subtle changes ... that had to do with how you work with film versus how you work with theatre — that was something I had to adapt to, since it was now being filmed and it was not one walk-through experience,” Branche stated. Not only did the final format of her Capstone change, but also the whole process that went into setting it up, as well as the way the audience experienced the project altered. In essence, there was an entire shift of medium, from theater to film.

However, Branche admitted that there were also some unexpected benefits to these changes. “One of the first positive outcomes was the fact that I got the Black Box at all. Usually, because there are so many performances … throughout the year, it is quite competitive to get the Black Box. But they kind of just handed it to me, for which I am very grateful,” she explained. “The fact that it was filmed allowed me to have a greater reach globally, since my family members and friends and people I’ve worked with outside the UAE were able to attend,” Branche concluded.

Another senior whose Capstone was initially meant to be performed in the Black Box is Eunsu Choi, a music major from South Korea. After having to abandon the idea of staging a musical since she could no longer include a live audience, Choi decided to shift to pure songwriting rather than musical theater.

“I decided to focus on … [the] intricacy of portraying the characters, relationships and circumstances of narrative on the lyrics and melody,” she stated. Despite the initial disappointment at the missed opportunity of performing in the Black Box, this outcome proved rather positive. “I really like this idea because it makes my life so much easier and makes the workload more manageable,” Choi admitted.

Anushka Malla Upadhyay, who is pursuing a joint Capstone in SRPP and Theater, opened up about her mixed experiences moving her project online. Her Capstone explores the question of whether participatory theater can create a space of agency and narrative-building for survivors of sexual violence. “A large part of my process is doing workshops … with survivors or doing playtests where I get to use interactive theater activities,” Upadhyay stated.

For a project which relies on close interactions with individuals from specific communities, the shift to online work brought new challenges. This was especially difficult since Upadhyay’s project focused on women from her hometown of Kathmandu, Nepal. “I couldn’t focus on the large part of the population that doesn’t have access to stable internet or a private space where they can come and talk over the internet over a span of almost two hours … I haven’t been back home to talk to people in person about this at all,” she admitted.

Nevertheless, similarly to Branche, the shift brought with it some benefits. “I had to change the population of my research to middle class and upper middle class people in Kathmandu … I’m reflecting back on my own experiences because I belong to this class of people … it has become in a way this very introspective, retrospective research,” Upadhyay stated. “That doesn’t happen very often, you know, when you do research on some population, you tend to do research on the ‘other.’”

Despite the tumultuous nature of the student experience in the past year, there have been moments which served as silver linings. Whether it be in the arts or any other domain that has been particularly affected by Covid-19, it is more important now than ever to hold onto the parts of this experience that we can take joy in or appreciate.