With the spooky season being quite limited this year, LZHS theatre has found a way to keep everyone entertained and on their toes. The team is releasing their very own radio show: Dracula and the Twisted Tales of Poe.

Although it is nothing like any of their previous plays and musicals, LZHS theatre has worked hard to adapt to the changes and create the best show for their audience, Alina Malin, senior cast member, said.

“When you’re not in person with people, obviously you can’t be moving around with blocking, but it’s also just hard to react and relate to the other characters. That’s been very different, but it’s also been really fun, because even though I’m sitting in my house, [I can] do all these fun accents and listen to these cool sound effects,” Malin said. “The show is driven by the audio, and usually the shows are not a lot of text. [Emotions are usually] conveyed through blocking or facial expressions, so it’s very cool that all this is made [with] sound effects and voices.”

The LZHS theatre has been doing their best to ensure all the different emotions can be captured through the use of technology, according to Malin, which has been crucial in helping make this radio show possible.

“We’ve been doing it on a podcasting site to get our sound in and then we record ourselves on our phones or our iPads,” Malin said. “It started with virtual auditions on Zoom, we submitted videos, and did callbacks on Zoom. We’ve been doing most rehearsals on Zoom and Zen Caster.”

The LZHS theatre has done their best to streamline the process and ensure the radio show is the best product that the show can be, according to Caitlin Rasbid, junior cast member. Despite the challenges being online has brought, the team is including a visual component to entertain the audience even more, according to Rasbid.

“Definitely not everything can move online. But we’ve tried to transition as much as we can to maintain both the technical theater aspect and the acting,” Rasbid said. “For costumes, they were able to make us look like 1940’s radio actors.”

The team has adjusted to all of the changes and are hopeful the Radio Show will be a success, according to Rasbid.

“I’m just really excited, because this whole process has been really new to me. It’s not anything that I have ever done before. So I’m really excited to see how it turns out and everything [I’ve] been practicing,” Rasbid said. “I’ve heard it from my point of view, but to see it as a full product, I think is going to be really exciting to see.”

The cast, crew, and all the directors have worked hard to make this possible, and are very excited to share their final product this Thursday and Friday at 7pm, and Saturday at 8pm, so make sure to click this link and check it out!