SHENANDOAH, Pa. — While many of us spent the last year inside watching movies and shows, production on a lot of new entertainment came to a halt.
Leanne Rooney is a Shenandoah native and a drama major at NYU.
"When our whole industry shut down for the past year and a half, we all were itching to create something, to do something together," Rooney said.
Director Sarah Elizabeth Yorke saw making a movie version of a play called "The Tall Girls" as a fitting return to action. It's set in the Midwest during the Great Depression.
"We're still living in and experiencing the devastation of COVID and to be able to look at a play where they're also experiencing these dust bowls, these storms that are rolling through, these things that are wiping people out with pneumonia and wiping people out by the thousands, they have no control," Yorke said.
The story is centered around five girls coming together to play basketball during a time when the government was trying to stop young women from playing sports.
"They are navigating not only what is happening in the Great Depression and what's happening in their lives, their individual conflicts, and individual struggles, but this drive to find purpose and this drive to find something that makes them tick in a society that doesn't give them many opportunities," Yorke said.
For the movie to come together, Yorke needed the right setting to film in. The Mahanoy City native immediately thought of the Cooper Building, an old high school in Shenandoah. Its dust-filled gymnasium with wooden backboards and fading lines was the perfect place.
Rooney, who portrays "Lurlene" in the film, said the location added to the experience.
"I think this space really helped us dive into the world of the play," she said.
The movie blends the Broadway play format with modern elements of cinema.
"[You see it in] certain shots and cuts and acting direction," Rooney said. "It's an interesting blend between the two, and I think bringing those two worlds together is something important and different for all of us."
"It was really exciting because we were able to make it a very local thing that can be seen on a national scale," Yorke added.
The movie premieres Sunday night at the Majestic Theatre Pottsville, and it's streaming online all weekend.