“Also, we were able to keep actors and musicians working during a difficult time,” McGee says. Their entire 2020-2021 season was staged as multimedia experiences with live audiences who could attend within the safety of their cars. “We even filmed a cameo video with Mayor Rick Kriseman.” The multi-media production using digital technology and live performers was wildly popular. The theater company adapted the alien invasion classic “War of the Worlds” and filmed parts of it in Plant City. For their protection from COVID, performers were in different parts of the building and were linked in for the sound.” They stayed in their cars and tuned in to a radio station to hear the show and music. Audience members were ticketed by the car. “We also had a large screen mounted on the side of the building. “We created a drive-in with an outside stage,” McGee says. With 165 parking spaces at its disposal, freeFall invented its own mode of survival. “We have one of the few places with free parking.” “We are on Central Avenue between 60th and 61st Street,” McGee says. If necessity is the mother of invention, freeFall used the resources at its disposal to reinvent itself. “We had to find the kind of programming to stay afloat… but we were not interested in doing a play on Zoom.” “We are theater makers, not filmmakers,” McGee says. The professional theater company that was founded in 2012 by Eric Davis, Jim Sorensen and Kevin Lane faced a shutdown. “We were unable to do what we did every day in our ten years of existence.” “All theater was unable to continue,” says Matthew McGee, freeFall’s outreach and marketing director. The feisty theater, which labels itself as “unexpected, daring and authentic” and invites audiences to “escape awhile," could not escape from the disruption of the COVID pandemic. Petersburg’s freeFall Theatre was hit with a wallop.
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