Mina Morita has been the artistic director of San Francisco’s Crowded Fire Theater for five years. Earlier this year, she began working with UC Berkeley’s Department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies (TDPS) to bring Dustin Chinn’s play “Snowflakes, or Rare White People” to the stage.
As was the case for many working in and around Berkeley, everything changed March 9, when the chancellor’s office announced the suspension of in-person classes at UC Berkeley due to the coronavirus pandemic. At the time, Morita said, she had a sore throat and was directing rehearsals from home, an omen of procedures to come. Amid the new restrictions, Morita said the production opted to pivot sooner rather than later toward a new approach, and spent the following weekend researching possible courses of action.
“Right now, because of (the coronavirus), theater in person can’t happen,” Morita said in an interview with The Daily Californian. “For many of us artists, we have turned to other means, whether it’s streaming on Instagram, podcasts — there’s audio plays, radio plays, any number of possible ways to celebrate narrative.”