‘In the Cotton’ Production Uses Innovative Techniques to Tackle Serious Topic
Clockwise top left are director Steven J. York; Angel Tyler ’21, who plays Meridian; and. assistant director Bayana Burnell ’21.
Directed by theatre professor Steven J. York, In the Cotton is driven by a racially motivated hate crime on a college campus, and the fallout as students and administrators take sides. The result in the award-winning play written by Morgan McGuire is conversations and explorations on racism, hate, protest and related threads.
York said the cast and crew developed some cutting-edge techniques for the production where its participants were never able to gather in one place due to the pandemic. Auditions, rehearsals and performances were held online.
The resulting “virtual theatre” is similar to traditional theatre in being produced in a single take, “but also very close to the process of creating live television in that there’s no audience present and that live performance is being captured on camera relying heavily on camera and sound feeds,” York said.
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