I am currently in the midst of directing Working: A Musical at CATCO in Columbus, Ohio. Well, I’m not actually in Columbus. In fact, while the majority of our creative team and three actors of six are in Ohio, only two of them are in Columbus. The rest are scattered in Cincinnati, Nebraska, New York, and here in Chicagoland, along with me and our music director.

This is the first virtual musical I’ve done. I’ve worked on other virtual pieces, but none of them have had as many moving pieces as this. Our music director is basically mixing an entire studio record. We have a digital designer, whose job includes editing, collaborating on framing, and figuring out how we make this look good.

Every night, we get on Zoom in our respective homes and “rehearse.” I put this word in quotes because what we’re actually doing is filming. The actors are one-person crews, setting up lighting, getting in costume and hair and makeup with guidance from our costume designer. Our digital designer and I talk them through framing, where to put their scene partners in their rooms, which area of their house we want to see in this section of the script. Our choreographer talks them through the music, dancing along with them and shouting choreography through the video conferencing software that is always slightly behind because of the Zoom lag. Our stage manager gives us a slate as she plays the tracks, lovingly mixed by our music director, of the actors singing, sometimes with music fading out so that they can speak their monologues. The cameras on their phones capture the chaos as it unfolds, take after take after take.

This process has been so radically different from everything I have ever done. Before the pandemic, I may have naively said that about every show. “Every show has its own challenges,” past-Daniella would wisely say. “Every show is a new process, a new opportunity for growth.”

“Oh, you sweet child,” current-Daniella would wistfully say. “If only you knew what awaited you.”

Musicals are already miracles. I have been part of shows that barely made it to stage by first preview. I’ve seen musicals that haven’t made it to stage by first preview. Through hard work, vigilance, and a sprinkle of theatre magic, they always manage to come together at the last second for opening night to produce exhilarating moments of connection.

Virtual musicals? Dear lord. What exists above a miracle? Cosmic events? We are essentially doing all of the things that are normally involved in creating a musical (namely, learning music, choreography, and character and marrying them together) along with everything involved in creating a film (storyboarding, recording and mixing audio, setting and framing shots, doing multiple takes, editing it all together). Movie musicals take years to produce, months to gather all of the content needed and piece them together. We’re doing it all in one month, and from our homes where roommates scream, plumbers work, neighbors gawk, and pets, spouses, and children (rightly) demand our attention.

In the same way that I have never been so pushed by a process, I have never felt so grateful to be working. In a time when theatre is nearly non-existent, I get the opportunity to innovate, to be “in a room” with other artists in a way and once again collaborate on how to make the impossible possible.

There are things that I miss. Tonight, we finished recording a song that I love fiercely. Two nights ago, we finished a song that made me sob the first time I heard the actors read the words aloud. I won’t get to talk to those actors about those numbers in that way again. I won’t get to listen to them every night as we run the show, lovingly guiding each number night by night to where we want it to be. I won’t get to watch my mother listen to Tagalog being sung in a musical, or my father hear the song about fathers building a legacy for their children. I won’t get to sit in my seat on opening night, half-terrified and half-exhilarated by the prospect of audiences seeing this little piece of my soul that I’ve bound to so many others to create the experience of the show.

Will it be good? I think so. I will admit I’m biased. I’ve poured a lot of time, love, and energy into this show. My friends and my fiance barely see me. But that’s no different from any other show. What is different now is the way it will be presented. We are not pretending to be anything but what we are: a group of people creating in a time when it is nearly impossible to create, each physically far away from the other but joined together for these moments. The final product will not look like any theatre you have seen before. It will likely not even look like most virtual theatre you have seen. But I hope it will touch on something human, something deep within us all, about how our work defines us. Because that’s what Working is ultimately about: what people do for a living, and how they feel about it.

Working: A Musical opens April 29, 2021 and runs through May 9. More information may be found here: https://www.catco.org/working/