DEC
14

The Amazing Possibilities of Virtual Theatre

By Tommy Croll 

It wasn’t my idea to attempt a virtual fall play for our middle school.  Add to this that it was my first year back in the classroom full time after an 18-year break to stay home and take care of my children, and this was the last thing I planned to attempt.  Our talent show coordinator, however, asked me if I was going to do a fall play, and I actually laughed and asked, “How is that possible?”  She had been in the middle of her talent show back in the spring when we first shut down, so luckily she had already navigated the virtual performance world.  She assured me that it was possible to create a show using Zoom.

Interestingly, the same day she proposed this to me, I received the annual catalog from Pioneer Drama with plays written specifically for the virtual setting.  Seeing that Pioneer Drama had created these scripts gave me hope that this could be done!  I chose a script that I thought would offer the most opportunity for involvement from our students and ordered the scripts and director book.

My next step was to set up virtual auditions.  Luckily, Pioneer Drama had A How-To Guide for Virtual Theatre with ideas about how to do this, so I followed the instructions and set up auditions using Flipgrid.  My principal suggested that I create a video explaining how to submit an audition video, and we emailed this with the Flipgrid link to all the parents and students in our school.  I included a monologue for them to read for the audition and included a list of characters with brief descriptions so they could specify in their audition video which characters they were interested in playing.  Amazingly, we had around 35 students audition for the play, and it took me only a few hours to go through the videos to create my cast list.

Next, I set up a Google Classroom page for the play group and used this platform to post our rehearsal schedule.  We usually started rehearsals in our Google Classroom in Google Meets.  I also set the “stream” to allow for comments and questions, so it was a place the kids could all connect when they had questions about rehearsal or just feedback to give each other.  I eventually started posting a Zoom link for them to go into to rehearse in their smaller groups once everyone was in the meeting because we felt like Zoom worked the best for the skits we were doing.

As we started rehearsals, I was really concerned about building relationships.  How could we create an ensemble with a screen between us?  How could we react to each other?  On the stage, I would play theatre games to begin this process, but how could I do that online?  I looked at all the theatre games I normally used and chose ones I thought would work online.  We played “One Word Stories” and “Improv by the Numbers” and even “Change Scene.”  I asked the older kids in our group to lead these games while I created the breakout rooms for rehearsal.  It worked!  They learned each other’s names and actually started socializing. 

As you can imagine, as we started rehearsing in Zoom, we encountered a myriad of issues from connectivity to sound to video quality.  Most of the students in our cast were using the district-issued Chromebooks, which really aren’t meant to be used for recording performances.  Somehow, we worked through each of these issues.  Again, I referred to Pioneer’s how-to guide, where I found ideas for lighting, sound, and camera issues as well as ideas for how to help with connectivity issues.  Hotspots helped many students with connection issues, while experimenting with using different devices solved some of the other connection issues.  Lighting was key in helping the video quality for our skits, and headphones with microphones helped with sound quality. 

For our final production, we decided to record in Zoom and create a YouTube video to release on the dates of our performances.  I will admit that I have absolutely no experience editing videos at all, and I just used the Microsoft video editing software on my computer to put together a really simple video with title slides that introduced each skit.  One of our cast members created a digital playbill in Google Slides that we emailed out with the link to the video for our performance days.  “IT WORKED!  IT WORKED!  IT WORKED!”  was all I could say for days afterwards.  Admittedly, the final videos still had some glitches with some delays and temporary screen freezes.  I even included a skit by accident that I was supposed to edit out.  We just kept a good sense of humor and decided it wouldn’t be a 2020 virtual performance without that kind of error!

The feedback from the community was amazing!  Grandparents who hadn’t seen their grandchildren in months were able to enjoy the performance safely at home.  Friends who also hadn’t seen each other in months were able to enjoy the performance.  Parents sent me thank you emails because their children had something to look forward to each day after school.  They also appreciated that their children were a part of something positive and fun during times when they were so limited in social interaction and opportunities.

At the end of our virtual cast party, after laughing about the obstacles we had overcome, one of the students said, “No!  I don’t want this to end!”  So, if you are considering a virtual production, please know that if I can do this, anyone can!