Local filmmaker teams with Greater Latrobe cast, crew for virtual fall play

Characters in the Greater Latrobe Senior High fall play find ways to connect despite the separations imposed by the coronavirus pandemic.

The play’s cast, crew and authors also are looking for a new way to connect with their audience — with a filmed performance that will be presented online.

Director Allison Duda began early in the summer pondering how to safely present the annual play while conforming to pandemic guidelines that require social distancing and limit attendance at public events.

“I looked into doing a radio show, but I didn’t like that idea,” she said, “and I couldn’t find an existing play that we could do safely without masks.”

Her husband, Jeff, had the idea for a play that would explore the challenges of the pandemic. The result was the 11-scene “Love … No Barriers,” an original show penned by the spouses with collaborators including Latrobe-based filmmaker Matt Fridg.

“My husband came up with the idea: Why don’t we make it about those restrictions and how people push through those barriers and obstacles,” Duda said.

Fridg, who operates Headspace Media, committed the play to video in the senior high auditorium during the last week of October, just before an increased level of transmission of the virus in Westmoreland County prompted Greater Latrobe to close all its schools and revert to full-time remote instruction.

Virtual viewers will see “more of a hybrid of a play and a film,” with scenes presented from a variety of angles, Fridg said. “People won’t feel like they’re in the back row of the auditorium. They will be on the stage, up close and personal to these stories.”

He also wrote the first scene in the play “Rooftop Romance,” which develops during additional episodes spaced throughout the show.

While on lockdown because of the pandemic, James, played by senior Dom Panichelle of Latrobe, meets a neighbor across the street, Paige, played by Sofia Herr, a senior from Unity. They’re challenged by being unable to cross the space that separates their apartments.

The characters “find a way to overcome difficult circumstances through love and a human connection,” Fridg said.

Panichelle, a late replacement for another actor who had to drop out, had less than two weeks to perfect his performance while working around participation in marching band and an after-school job.

Friends who were in the cast asked him to try out.

“I thought it would be fun,” he said. “The most challenging thing was knowing the lines, but I had good direction.”

Herr, a veteran of theatrical productions at Greater Latrobe and with Greensburg’s Stage Right troupe, auditioned for her role by improvising a virtual date. In the initial sections of the scene, she explained, “We’re dictating what we’re typing in a text message or what we’re saying over the phone.”

The play’s sets perform the dual function of keeping performers in multi-character scenes socially distanced by space, fences or walls, while underlining the theme of the show.

One of Dudas’ daughters, Annie, a senior, wrote a song, “Somebody,” that she sings while accompanying herself on guitar in a solo scene of the same name set in a bedroom.

“I started this song in March, when this (pandemic) was all happening,” the younger Duda said. “It’s a stream-of-consciousness song about feeling trapped or that you can’t escape your current situation. The walls are going to be moving in the whole time while I’m playing it.”

Other scenes include “Fenced In,” about two women who need a “momcation” after being locked down with their husbands and young children, and “Raisin Cookies,” about a nursing home resident and his granddaughter who swap cookies and advice while visiting on opposite sides of a window.

In “Game On,” two locked-down teens connect over gaming headsets. “Hybrid Hell” displays the differing perspectives a teacher and two students have concerning the type of hybrid learning program Greater Latrobe and other area school districts have used at some point — a rotation between in-person classroom instruction and virtual lessons at home.

“I’m excited to still give our kids this experience in this weird part of our lives,” Allison Duda said of the play.