LovelSich
OTT

>» The Other Press interviews
actor Julie Koebel and director
Tamara McCarthy on their
upcoming play ‘Love/Sick’

Craig Allan
Business Manager

 

any areas of Douglas College

were put on pause or switched to
virtual meetings during the pandemic,
but one area of the college that was
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theatre program. Since March of 2020,
students in the theatre program have
had to trade in the cheers and laughter
of a live audience for the camera
lens of a Zoom virtual broadcast.
With the pandemic subsiding and life
getting back to normal, the theatre
program was looking for the right play
to welcome audiences back to live
theatre. They found it in John Cariani's
play Love/Sick. The Other Press spoke with director Tamara
McCarthy and actor Julie Koebel about their planning for
Love/Sick, prepping for a play while still in the midst of
COVID-19, and the unadulterated joy both share in the return
of live theatre.

Both McCarthy and Koebel describe the play as a love
cycle, showing the life of love from a young person through
to older age. The play is divided into eight different short
stories describing the flows of a love cycle; from the first
moments of a relationship to the first “I love you”, stopping
at a breakup or continuing to marriage with kids and old
age. Because of this, if someone is sick with COVID-19,
the production does not have to stop because of one
person. These scenes take place in intimate locations like

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a bedroom, to more mundane places like a supermarket.
With the world coming out of COVID-19, director McCarthy
really wanted to do something that was funny and heartfelt,
saying: “I really wanted to do something that had humour(...]
Everyone can relate to love, and being in love.”

Koebel is no stranger to the theatre scene, having
performed in plays like Heathers at D.W. Poppy Secondary
School in Langley, and Once Upon a Fairytale with the
Vagabond Players at The Bernie Legge Theatre in New West.
She is taking what she has learned from those plays and other
experiences in theatre and incorporating it into her roles in
Love/Sick. “Everything in your past just builds the foundation
that takes you to where you are,” Koebel explains. Koebel
is playing three different women all involved in lesbian

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“l really wanted to do something that had humour[...]
Everyone can relate to love, and being in love.

- Tamara McCarthy