• The Creation of “Zoomtheater” in the Time of COVID-19
• Nora Glickman

Among the numerous disasters that COVID-19 has caused since the beginning of March 2020—the death of hundreds of thousands, the loss of jobs and businesses, the closing of schools and cancellation of artistic events—, we appreciate any signs of a silver lining in this pandemic.

In June 2020, the CUNY Academy for the Humanities and Sciences (Enclave: Revista de Creación Literaria) and The Latin American Writers Institute (LAWI) sponsored three workshops in Literary Creation in Spanish. These workshops, conducted in person in 2019 at one of the CUNY Colleges, were held this time via Zoom. The immediate advantage was that the criteria of selection for the candidates did not have to be restricted by geographic distance. While the criteria for admission were samples of previous creative writings, publishing experience, and potential, New York City ceased to be the central location, which meant that the choices could be more far-reaching and ambitious. Participants also included CUNY graduate students.

The outcome of the workshops on drama, narrative fiction, and TV script writing was both surprising and inspiring. Most striking was the solid bond that the workshops generated among the participants: Latin American and Latino residents, documented and undocumented, immigrants and refugees.

The participants completed assignments with COVID-19 as their center of reference. The workshops featured the discussion of challenging books and films, old and new, references to other artistic genres, and the creation of new strategies imposed by the pandemic. The real and the symbolic merged. Face masks, physical distancing, and hand sanitizing, all were dramatized and given fresh association.

I shall concentrate on the Drama Workshop, since its unforeseen result is a product of our current situation, a new genre that goes beyond conventional theatre and includes such media as film, telephone communication, and the [End Page 217] Internet. This way of making theatre “en vivo” allows us to witness the wide range of emotions that are revealed in original scenes, such as that of a man who is visiting Peru during COVID-19, unable to return to New York, and resists being “redomesticated” by his mother as if he had never left home. There is also the despairing Venezuelan grandmother, exiled in Spain, who loses everything, including her memory, but is virtually consoled by her granddaughter from her minuscule New York apartment. Another scene opens with an exchange of technical internet instructions between two office workers under the stress of the pandemic, a casual encounter that develops into a love affair. And finally, the woman who, confined in her suburban home, feels compelled to murder her husband.

Lupe Gehrenbeck, a distinguished Caracas-New York actress and dramatist, conducted her CUNY drama workshop from Caracas, her home during the pandemic, training and guiding the Latin American, North American, and European participants who conceived and wrote these dramatic scenes. While her first step consisted of completing scenes read by the participants, she subsequently presented the results to public viewers through GALTO (Group of Literary Action for an Organic Theatre), which offered its platform to stage the scenes written at the CUNY Creative Drama Workshop. This project, which lasted six weeks, involved professional actors and live performances, which, due to the pandemic, were presented in a virtual format. The YouTube “Galtoteatro” channel allowed Lupe to develop the dramatic writings conceived by the participants into practical stagings. After these performances took place, everyone’s work was discussed, in the same manner as in the Actor Studio of New York City.

Galto-Zoom productions are part of a larger, more ambitious project that Gehrenbeck has been directing for the four past years—an exploration of the various elements that promote theatrical creation in relation to our present condition. In her own words, “the teaching of dramaturgy is not about the propagation of formula on how to make a scene work or a dialogue flow—for that there are multiple manuals that one can access through Internet.” What she proposes instead is “to identify the truth hidden in the expressive needs of each creator with the intent of bringing out his/her own voice, because only honesty in art...

• COVID-19 时代“Zoomtheater”的创建
• 诺拉·格利克曼

自 2020 年 3 月以来，COVID-19 造成的众多灾难中——数十万人死亡、工作和企业流失、学校关闭和艺术活动取消——我们欣赏任何一线希望的迹象在这次疫情中。

2020 年 6 月，纽约市立大学人文与科学学院 ( Enclave: Revista de Creación Literaria ) 和拉丁美洲作家协会 (LAWI) 赞助了三场西班牙语文学创作研讨会。这些研讨会于 2019 年在纽约市立大学的一所学院亲自举办，这次是通过 Zoom 举办的。直接的好处是候选人的选择标准不必受到地理距离的限制。虽然录取标准是以前的创意作品、出版经验和潜力的样本，但纽约市不再是中心位置，这意味着选择可能会更加深远和雄心勃勃。参与者还包括纽约市立大学的研究生。

戏剧、叙事小说和电视剧剧本创作工作坊的成果既令人惊讶又鼓舞人心。最引人注目的是研讨会在参与者之间建立的牢固联系：拉丁美洲和拉丁裔居民、有证和无证、移民和难民。

参与者以 COVID-19 为参考中心完成了作业。研讨会的特色是讨论具有挑战性的新旧书籍和电影、对其他艺术流派的引用，以及大流行带来的新策略的创造。真实与象征融合。戴口罩、保持身体距离和手部消毒，所有这些都被戏剧化并赋予了新的联想。

我将专注于戏剧工作坊，因为它不可预见的结果是我们当前情况的产物，一种超越传统戏剧的新类型，包括电影，电话通讯和[结束第217页]互联网。这种使剧院“活生生”的方式使我们能够目睹原始场景中所揭示的各种情感，例如在 COVID-19 期间访问秘鲁、无法返回纽约并拒绝接受的人的情感被他的母亲“重新驯化”，就好像他从未离开过家一样。还有绝望的委内瑞拉祖母，流放到西班牙，她失去了一切，包括她的记忆，但实际上她的孙女从她位于纽约的小公寓里得到了安慰。另一个场景以两位上班族在大流行的压力下交换技术互联网指令开始，一次偶然的相遇发展成恋情。最后，那个被限制在郊区家中的女人觉得有必要谋杀她的丈夫。

Lupe Gehrenbeck 是一位杰出的加拉加斯-纽约女演员和剧作家，她在大流行期间的家乡加拉加斯举办了她的 CUNY 戏剧工作坊，培训和指导了构思和创作这些戏剧场景的拉丁美洲、北美和欧洲的参与者。虽然她的第一步是完成参与者阅读的场景，但随后她通过 GALTO（有机剧院文学行动小组）向公众展示了结果，该组织提供了展示在纽约市立大学创意戏剧工作室创作的场景的平台。该项目历时六周，涉及专业演员和现场表演，由于大流行，这些表演以虚拟形式呈现。YouTube“Galtoteatro”频道允许 Lupe 将参与者构思的戏剧作品发展为实际的舞台表演。这些表演结束后，大家的作品被讨论，就像在纽约市演员工作室一样。

Galto-Zoom 制作是 Gehrenbeck 过去四年一直在指导的一个更大、更雄心勃勃的项目的一部分——探索与我们当前状况相关的促进戏剧创作的各种元素。用她自己的话来说，“戏剧教学不是关于如何制作场景或对话流的公式的传播——因为有多个手册可以通过互联网访问。” 相反，她提出的是“找出隐藏在每个创作者表达需求中的真相，意图发出自己的声音，因为只有艺术中的诚实......