If you can’t beat it, develop a series about it Local actors respond to pandemic-induced shutdown with pair of socially distanced projects By: Frances Koncan Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Thursday, Jun. 4, 2020 Last Modified: 7:13 PM CDT Thursday, Jun. 4, 2020 Updates

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 03/06/2020 (1569 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s been almost three months now since the theatre and film industries in Manitoba had to shut down owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, and while the film industry is slowly reopening, theatres are set to remain closed at least through the summer.

With limited work to go around, what’s an actor to do?

For Andrea Del Campo and Gwen Collins, the answer to that question was simple: make their own work.

Working with, instead of against, the restrictions and limitations imposed by COVID-19, Del Campo and Collins dreamed about creating a web series that reflected the reality of life during a pandemic.

The two actors are familiar faces on screen and onstage: Del Campo, 35, was most recently seen in Prairie Theatre Exchange’s The Wedding Party and on screen in the criminally underrated Hallmark Christmas movie Our Christmas Love Song, while the 33-year-old Collins has played roles on TV shows including The Pinkertons, Channel Zero and Tales from the Loop and onstage in One Trunk Theatre’s Red Earth and the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre’s Alice Through the Looking Glass.

“We were bouncing around ideas of a series that fit within the confines that we’re living in.” – Andrea Del Campo

“We were bouncing around ideas of a series that fit within the confines that we’re living in,” says Del Campo. “What are some premises that exist within our current social-distancing confines? We wanted to work with it.”

That brainstorming session inspired creations based on two activities that have recently gone digital: therapy and summer camp.

“Camp can’t happen this year and it’s gotta be online,” says Collins, director and creator of Camp COVID, which is set to be released later this summer. “We start off with these five camp counsellors who are meeting and have to plan camp online for the youth that will be attending. They have to come up with different things like water safety and fire building or identifying house plants.”

Meanwhile, Well.net, a four-episode series about a small company of online therapists, begins streaming Friday.

“At Well.net there are three very effective therapists that can help anyone with whatever their problems are, but they all have challenges in their lives that have made them pretty lonely,” says Del Campo, who created and directed the comedy. “The series is about these three people getting a little less lonely.”

Both Camp COVID and Well.net feature clients and characters played by guest artists, the identities of which are a surprise to both the audience and the actors (for Well.net the principal cast is Ray Strachan as Leon, Claire Therese as Krys and Sarah Constible as Siobhan).

Once the ideas were fleshed out, the next — and trickier — step became figuring out how to actually shoot the series when none of the actors could be in the same room. Typically, films are in development for long periods of time before they start shooting, but Del Campo and Collins wanted to get things off the ground as soon as possible.

“We didn’t want to develop this for a year because it wouldn’t feel as relevant,” Del Campo says. “We wanted it to be really timely.”

For Strachan, 41, whose screen credits include The Pinkertons and another often overlooked Hallmark film Once Upon a Christmas, the process of performing via Zoom has been both unusual and enjoyable.

“We don’t have a script, we have scenarios, so we’re improvising a lot of it,” Strachan say of the cast’s Zoom meetings. “Whatever comes out comes out. Then we do notes and try it again.”

“Every actor participates from their actual homes and having dialogue that’s improvised plays into the hyper-natural feeling of this,” says Del Campo. “In the scenes, people stutter and interrupt each other. It’s neat to work on something that is unpolished, in a sense.”

“It’s exciting and fun to play off each other,” Strachan says. “You don’t have people judging you in the room, so it’s pretty freeing.”

“We don’t have a script, we have scenarios, so we’re improvising a lot of it.” – Ray Strachan

Of course, the new way of working isn’t without its challenges.

“I’ve never done anything like this before,” says Del Campo, whose previous writing had been for the stage. “So, the way I got around that was by writing scenarios and choosing actors that I knew would create good dialogue. The challenge has been inventing a process that plays to everybody’s strength while not asking anybody to learn a very difficult task really quickly.”

Collins appreciated the opportunity for collaboration, even though the circumstances aren’t ideal. “So much of why I do this is about physically being in a room with people,” she says. “It’s been challenging creating this over Zoom. It’s hard but necessary for this time.”

“For someone who does more theatre than film, it is different not doing a scene with someone there in person,” adds Strachan, “but at the same time it speaks to the situation that we’re in.”

Well.net begins streaming Friday on the Wellnet Series YouTube channel at wfp.to/wellnet.

Frances.Koncan@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @franceskoncan