By Madelyn Curtis

In a normal school year, Collegiate girls from 5th grade through 12th grade would pack into Oates Theater the day before Thanksgiving. Everyone would be screaming, singing, dancing, and laughing together. But, due to COVID-19, the 2020 Brunch was postponed.

The annual Brunch tradition is a play that is written, directed, and performed by the junior girls as a gift for the senior girls. In years past, the junior girls would start writing the play in the summer and then spend the fall rehearsing, learning dances, and gathering props and costumes for the performance. Then, on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, they perform the play for the senior girls and the rest of the Middle and Upper School girls.

Brunch is one of the highlights of the year for the girls at Collegiate. Throughout the play, everyone cheers, and it is an important bonding experience for each of the grades.

With the COVID-19 restrictions in place this year, it was not possible to perform Brunch during Thanksgiving break. The faculty advisors for Brunch, Director of Student Life Beth Kondorossy and Upper School Spanish teacher Hannah Curley, adopted a “wait and see” approach for deciding what the plan for Brunch was going to be. They wanted the experience and the play to be as normal as possible, so they chose to wait to make a final decision until the second semester. 

They cited January 1 as the date they would wait for state restrictions to change, and when they did not, Kondorossy and Curley collaborated with this year’s Brunch student co-chairs, Alice Hallock (‘22) and Ava Riddle (‘22), to figure out the best possible method to present the play. 

They landed on turning Brunch into a movie. This allowed for freedom in the rehearsing and performing, as well as the presentation. 

Kondorossy thinks that since Brunch will be a well-edited movie, it will be “more memorable” and “different” than past years. “People will want to film [their Brunches],” she said. 

“This movie will be something these junior and senior girls can treasure, and I think that is the best part of Brunch, regardless of the medium,” Hallock remarked. 

Maria Bonwell (‘22) and Madie Vincent (‘22) directed the Brunch movie this year, and they were faced with more of a challenge than usual. They had to figure out how to form a cohesive play when only four people could be on stage at one time to film. 

Kondorossy, Curley, as well as the directors, give a great deal of credit to the theater department for their help in the filming and editing of Brunch. Director of Performing Arts Mike Boyd, Technical Director and Set Designer Alan Williamson, Theater Technician Sheamus Coleman, and Theater Production Technician Gabe Yelanjian all helped out with the production of Brunch. Kondorossy was extremely thankful for all of their help and advice, saying that Brunch could not have been done without them. 

Oates Theater was set up to allow actors to be onstage to recite their lines without masks. A green screen was put up at the back of the stage, so that the backgrounds of the different settings in the play could be edited in. In front of the green screen, there were four sections set up with sheets of plastic in between. The combination and the distance between the sections allowed actors to take off their masks for short periods of time. 

The green screen will also allow the editing team to layer the actors to appear as if they are standing next to each other in the final video. This same strategy was used in the fall, winter, and spring plays. 

The task of blocking and coordinating where each actor should look fell to Bonwell and Vincent. “We literally took a sheet of paper and drew out every character’s position in [each] scene,” Vincent explained. In choosing the placement of each character, Bonwell looked at the script holistically and the individual plot lines. “I came up with the idea of the evil or nonpartisan characters on one side (stage left), with good characters on the other (stage right),” she said. Bonwell also noted that “this also made it easier for Mr. Williamson to know where to put people in the software.” She also placed more main characters in the center of the stage and had small, comedic characters, what she called “one-hit wonders,” on stage left. 

As for where the actors would look, Bonwell diagramed the scenes for the actors to reference. She described it as “simple.” “We just had people look to where the people they were speaking to would be on screen,” she explained. 

During the filming, groups of three or four actors would come on stage and say their lines. The filming was efficient and went by quickly. Actors could say their lines again if they made a mistake, and the directors explained everything once the actors got on stage.

One of the benefits of filming Brunch is the ability to get your lines perfect and have a second chance if you make a mistake. Normally, during the live play, it would be easy to mess up your lines. And, with so many girls screaming, it might be hard to hear or pay attention. With the film, we are able to avoid these problems. 

One of the negatives was the lack of the audience. No one was able to laugh at the jokes, and we could not feed off the energy from our friends. It was hard to have the same enthusiasm when there was no reaction from an audience.

I am so grateful to be able to have put on Brunch this year. Participating in Brunch is a rite of passage for junior girls at Collegiate, so despite the restrictions and differences from normal years, I was so happy to be able to do it in a safe way. 

“We’ve really made the best of a bad situation this year, and I think it will turn out great,” Riddle said. I agree with Riddle in that we were successful with making the most out of what we could do under COVID-19 restrictions. 

But, there were still parts of Brunch that we missed out on this year. Normally, the junior girls spend long nights in Oates Theater rehearsing and getting ready, and the junior girls have a grade-wide sleepover the night before the play. 

“I think the biggest part that I missed was the anticipation of the actual day, for example dancing on the stage pre-Brunch, getting each grade from their hallways, and just like the nervous excitement of it all,” Keaton Rahman (‘22) said. 

Brunch is a really important bonding experience for the grade, and we were all disappointed about missing that aspect.

“I do feel like we missed out on getting closer as a grade, because almost everything was done remote by ourselves,” Eliza Stone (‘22) added.  

Lucy Barnes (‘22) felt like she missed out on watching the production form throughout rehearsals. “I honestly don’t even know what happens outside of the scenes I was in, because we never got to come together to see it as a whole,” she commented. 

There has still been plenty of bonding among the junior girls, although in a different way. “I am so glad to have gotten to know each and every one of [the junior girls] better this year!!” Hallock said. 

Kondorossy and Curley also think that the junior girls have gotten “more resilient” due to Brunch being different this year. Adapting to obstacles and figuring out solutions has made the junior class stronger and more flexible. 

On Tuesday, May 25 (weather permitting), the junior and senior girls will gather on Grover Jones field to watch the Brunch movie, “outdoor movie night style,” Hallock said. Kondorossy and Curley, as well as the Collegiate administration, have been so helpful in figuring out ways for the junior girls to still be able to do Brunch and other traditions. 

Ryann Zaun (‘22) puts it best in saying, “While I wish we could have the Brunch we have all been picturing since fifth grade, with so many lives lost due to COVID-19, there is no question that it is more important to keep everyone safe. I will gladly modify our Brunch to 2020’s terms in order to keep everyone healthy!”

All photos by Alice Hallock.