INTERVIEW: Ice Factory Festival finishes with ‘A Burning Church’
Photo: A Burning Church, a new musical featuring the work of Zhailon Levingston, will be presented as part of the Ice Factory Festival. Photo courtesy of the artist / Provided by DARR Publicity with permission.
The New Ohio Theatre’s Ice Factory Festival, which this summer is being presented online, finishes its multi-week run with the premiere of A Burning Church, a musical with book and direction by Alex Hare and Zhailon Levingston, music by Nehemiah Luckett, and lyrics by Levingston.
The show, which runs Aug. 13-15, details the ups and downs of Calvary Baptist Church, focusing on church leaders, congregants and their shared history of “protest movements, tragedies and spiritual rebirth,” according to press notes.
For the Ice Factory Festival run, audience members can expect the songs and select scenes to be presented, with the promise of a full production in the future. Recently Hollywood Soapbox exchanged emails with Levingston about the show. On Broadway, he served as associate director of Tina: The Tina Turner Musical. He has also directed Chicken and Biscuits and the Antonyo Awards. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style.
What inspired you to help create this show?
The story of the show came out of two years of constant conversation with my co-creator Alex Hare about what kind of musical we’d want to make together. We knew we wanted it to try and address certain big questions facing the nation today. We also knew that we wanted the form to be as ambitious as the content, but what that content was didn’t come until about a year into the process. For a long time I was mainly inspired by the rigor of our conversations as they helped to stretch my imagination to new places.
Have there been challenges to craft a piece of theater for a virtual audience?
Crafting a piece of theatre for a virtual audience is very challenging, but creating a piece of musical theatre for a virtual audience is pretty much exclusively challenging. This is mostly because not only are we creating a new work of theatre but we are creating a new process of working at the same time. In my case, for A Burning Church we are presenting the new material in a framework that feels like a podcast, short film and album. It’s all the wild, wild west.
How did rehearsals run with the cast members?
Rehearsals in the Zoom room are still fun but very different. We have to think about things like wifi connection, screen fatigue and the inability to musically rehearse multiple singers at once. But on the bright side, location is no longer a barrier for working with who you want. Our cast is not all in New York, and some actors we wouldn’t be able to work with if it were not for things going virtual.
What do you hope are the important lessons or takeaways that the virtual audience leaves the production with?
I hope our audience are both inspired by the message of the musical, which is primarily circling around themes of care for the ‘other’ and the importance of reimagining institutions, but I also hope that audiences are inspired by the possibility to still tell stories during this crazy time.
Do you feel that live theater has been changed forever because of the COVID-19 pandemic?
Live theatre has for sure been changed forever, but it has not and will not die so long as it’s smart enough to adapt to the times. Adapt. Or. Die.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
The New Ohio Theatre’s Ice Factory Festival continues with A Burning Church Aug. 13-15. Click here for more information.
