Come From Away

Come+From+Away

While in New York City, Fine Arts students were given the opportunity to see two Broadway musicals. One of them was Come From Away, which is about the country’s largest terrorist attack, 9/11.

After the attack, there were many planes flying within U.S. air space. Over 4,000 planes were directed to land in a small town in Canada called Gander, Newfoundland. The people of this town were only given a couple of hours notice that their town’s population was about to double.

None of the passengers were allowed off the planes until each plane was swept for a bomb threat. In addition to being stuck on the planes for hours on end, no one knew what had happened in New York. People from all backgrounds and cultures had to come together to get through this crisis.

“As an actor, I was really impressed with the authenticity of the performance and how immersed the actors were when they went on stage. The [actors] played multiple different parts and their transitions were really seamless,” junior Abby Burris said. “I loved seeing how the emotions of the actors’ would transcend from character to character so that was really interesting to watch. They only had one set that they used but it transitioned in to multiple different [sets] as well and they had a revolving stage.”

There were about 12 actors who played two or more characters within the span of the show.  

“There was only one act meaning there was no intermission. And it was all one scene that they would move around to create something out of the original. They did “asides” in the center of the stage so the actors had to really make it believable. It‘s more recent and a lot of shows aren’t about recent events,” Burris said.