The Norfolk Community Theater was right in the middle of its last production of the season before everything was brought to a premature halt.

“Northeast had decided to just shut down campus when things started to really break out,” said Libby McKay, president of the Norfolk Community Theater board.

“Which meant that we had to cancel the final performances of War of the Worlds. I had to be the one to deliver that news to the director.”

The theater’s board of directors were left with a theater that was impossible to fill and an uncertain future for next season.

“We weren’t really sure how to proceed immediately after we closed the show. We handled trying to take care of people who had purchased tickets for shows that were no longer going to happen, and then kind of did the wait-and-watch, like ‘what’s going to happen?’” she said.

Rather that take a hiatus, the community theater decided to make their comeback… online.

“We’re calling it, ‘It’s Virtually Theater’, and our opener is actually called ’12 Incompetent Jurors,’ and it’s a parody on 12 Angry Men," she said.

“And it’s actually been re-written to be performed in Zoom.”

You read that right.

Practicing social distancing has inspired the crew to put a new spin on an old classic. The theater’s first major production of the season will be held entirely in a Zoom meeting. 

“The Jurors can’t go to the courthouse because of COVID, and there are gags included in it that any of us who’ve been in a Zoom meeting have probably experienced.”

12 Incompetent Jurors is set to get started right on schedule, “The Zoom one will go up the first two weekends of October,” she said, and the fresh perspective on theatrics is not the only surprise this season will bring.

“One of the other special things that we’re doing this season is that it is a free-will donation season,” McKay said. “If you can give us $1, you get all of the keys to all of the shows for the season.”