Imagine this: you wake up and there is something or someone stopping you from doing what you love. For Bobcat Company, a group of students at Central High School, restrictions kept them from doing what they love: a spring musical.
Bobcat Company, or musical theater, has all sorts of definitions, but the one that stands out the most is that it is a family. Many students have met friends and people that they can call their family through performances, but a pandemic made that difficult to accomplish during the 2020-2021 school year. Going through a pandemic is one thing, but going through a pandemic and not being able to have a musical, well that is a completely different story.
Masks and limited singing was something that many students did not expect, but it was enforced due to Covid-19 “taking the spotlight” away from an annual musical. Students have only 30 minutes to sing, with masks on, while they social distance. The outcome of half an hour of singing is that Bobcat Company has not been able to sing since September of 2020.
In addition to not singing for a few months, one student said, “we have to look at the class as not musical theater but as more of a musical theory class now.” Due to a pandemic, the one thing that the class wanted was something fun to close the school year out. The seniors are missing out on a last time musical that they waited their senior year for, but no one regrets joining the class.
Though a musical has been “pulled from Bobcat Company’s hand,” other sports have been able to still enjoy doing what they love, all while not wearing masks. One student from Bobcat Company thinks that “if sports teams have the ability to continue and don’t have to even wear masks, the arts should get equal opportunity.” The class is unable to work on choreography, songs, and learning their role because of the pandemic, which is hard when they see students in other activities who seem to have different rules applied.
Although a pandemic is taking away something the performers hold close the students are working on a mini project to where they can still have fun. A musical is out of the question because of safety precautions and what the students are working on is not finished. The one thing we do know though is that this is not the end of Bobcat Company.
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