Day 28 - Thankful for an artistic home... even in a pandemic

The 2020 Conference... made possible by Zoom!

Even though we weren't able to safely meet in McCall for our 2020 conference, we still had a busy and successful -- and joyful! --  conference. Pictured above is only a fraction of the work we were able to accomplish last June -- thanks to the Zoom platform.

In fact, the 2020 conference played host to our largest company of artists ever! More than 70 artists in 17 states, across 4 time zones worked on plays with 8 amazing playwrights. We were even able to continue our work with the student playwrights at McCall-Donnelly High School (one of our highlights of every conference).

We presented 3 public zoom readings with over 300 audience members attending from 24 states and 3 countries! With audience members stretching from Hawai'i to Belgium, one reading bridged across an 11 hour time difference! But our largest pool of attendees came, as always, came from our home audience in McCall, Idaho. We came away from the 2020 Conference tremendously grateful for the technology that enabled us to extend our reach far beyond anything we could have imagined, as well as the opportunity to connect with the home and heart community we were so deeply missing in McCall. 

Our actors were sent green screens -- you can see them in the photos with our Production Manager, Ed Baker, who helped us all solve our many technical problems -- and Skip Mercier designed virtual backgrounds to bring actors into the same virtual space. (But we'll thank Skip more later!) 

While we of course missed McCall mightily, the marvels of 21st century technology allowed us to have design meetings, rehearse -- and even socialize! (The only thing we couldn't do was have a virtual hot springs trip!)
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You can read more about the 2020 conference in this lovely article in American Theater, written by one of our conference playwrights and board member Patrick Gabridge!