Teaching Drama Online through Immersion - The ACSI Drama Xchange 2014

If there has been one event in my teaching career that I have felt "blessed" by it is the ACSI Drama Xchange. For those who follow my blogs you may have read about the inaugural event I was involved with, and certainly my reflections on the quality of the event have not changed. This remains one of the most important Theatre Immersion programs for Christian students that I have ever been a part of.

I was privileged enough to return again this year with a new batch of students, and an entirely different context.

I have been dreaming for years about the potential of Theatre in the Distance Education world. How might a course designer approach building a stage production when the students will not meet face-to-face until the day of the performance? How can a collaborative project done entirely at a distance turn into something as personal and intimate as a live performance? How can the inherent introversion that an online-student enjoys be translated into the implicit extroversion required in delivering a powerful monologue? These were all questions I've had for years, and I found myself actively researching as I prepared my students for a performance on the Rosebud Theatre Stage in May 2014.

I write this reflection as a template I hope others can follow and also as a thank you to the test-subjects (students) who participated in my "study".

Goal: To create an original short-piece for the stage collaboratively and online which would then be performed by the collaborators on the day of their first face-to-face meeting.

The Stage
Set for the Diary of Anne Frank

To begin we had to choose subject matter. One of the students found a well written play from the 19th Century called the Youthful Martyrs of Rome which, in it's form, had to first be decoded and translated before it could be reinterpreted.
Learning Outcomes: Historical Theatre, Verse, Dramaturgy

One of my students (in Grade 8) took the task of decoding the play very seriously and he became crucial to helping us all create a vision for what would become our script. He began by rewriting the prologue in elegant verse of his own.

Next students had to imagine the characters of ancient Rome as they might appear in a modern community setting. Who would "we" be? What would "we" look like? What might our conflicts entail? In an online dialogue lasting roughly an hour we were able to take the story and imagine these characters in modern time; yes we still have martyrs, yes they occur in everyday Western Culture, yes their stories are still important.
Learning Outcomes: Creating Character, Storytelling

Students at Script Analysis Workshop

With characters in place, and a setting decided on we now had to create meaningful conflict and relationship in our script. We started with an outline and over the course of three hour-long sessions we were able to construct a script that encompassed the moral and theme of the original play but had it's own original feel and personal importance. Most importantly during this approach was to have students work together in teams of two, online of course, and on one scene only. Embedded in this design is the nature of Improvisation: Expanding on the ideas of others, and letting go of the control in a story. So each student was able to put their own spin on the tale, knowing that the others would be working to support their story by "extending" the ideas rather than the typical creative work that is so often seen in groups of this age.
Learning Outcomes: Collaboration, Improvisation, Script Writing

Unfortunately it was at this point that we realized our time was up (for preparation) and our time at Rosebud was at hand. We would be meeting for the first time with a script in hand but no rehearsal (part of my research that would have to be tabled another time). Moreover we had a final scene which had not yet been envisioned. The last scene of the play, the denoument, would have to be discovered together, on-stage, in front of an audience.

Rosebud Professionals bringing Scripture to its Feet

Fast forward now to Rosebud. Having shared our situation with the staff at the Xchange they welcomed the opportunity to witness something that was entirely new, and entirely different than they had ever seen on that stage, from the students. We were afforded 20 minutes of time to acquaint ourselves with the stage, and another 90 minutes to rehearse in the hallway. It was at this point that our script was read aloud for the first time.
Learning Outcomes: Rehearsal, Acting

The students, being familiar with the story, were able to dive into the characters with little reluctance. We set our goal for the day (and ultimately the performance) as: "Make sure we have a lot of laughs among us, not because we're embarrassed but because we're having fun." I reassured them that if the project failed, it would be my failure and not theirs, and if the project was a success it was because we were all in it together. So much of what I try to teach in my "drama classroom" was being put in action in the hallway of the Rosebud Theatre.

The diversity of students and their skill was apparent immediately. Some were evidently NOT the "cold-read" type, delivering their speeches stilted, and broken. Others took to the stage as though they had been missing it -- improvising lines and reactions and thoroughly enjoying their scripts as it was "revealed". The most important discovery at this point was that in order to collaborate, tell a good story, and be entertaining to the audience we had to a) tell the truth of the story, b) tell the truth of OUR story (who we are, and what we were faced with) and c) get up on-stage and simply improv it!
Learning Outcomes: Readers' Theatre, Acting, Improv

We added some games to each scene to keep the students from staring at their scripts. Stand-up, Sit-down, Lie-down; introducing unpredicted elements, audience participation, and challenges to overcome were introduced in rehearsal to allow the students to realize that the story could happen no matter what they faced on stage, and it allowed me as the director to find ways for each students' strength to be showcased in some way. It also took the tension off them to be "perfected" on-stage, as they realized that in improv it's not what you have perfected that makes for a good show, but what you're willing to put into a scene.

When the time came to show what we had prepared we were lucky enough to be the last group to go late that night. The audience was effectively "Cooled-down" and were definitely looking for something different after five schools showed their short-stories on-stage. Credit to those students for creating excellent performance pieces of a diverse genre range, and to have taken the time to craft something worthy of the stage. We were not going to be "those schools"....

These seats would soon be filled.

We stayed true to the approach. We brought in audience members to play characters, asked for scenes to be adjusted to match what they wanted to see. We had fun. We played. And in the end, we had a show that the audience warmly received, the students I brought were glowing with smiles and comaraderie and the feedback from the adjudication essentially boiled down to appreciation for having discovered a "new style of theatre" and intense appreciation for the nature and ethic behind what we attempted.

The students were then able to dive into the workshops put on by the camp, meet other students, and enjoy what Rosebud offers similar to what was posted in my last reflection. I pause now to allow the students the space to reflect themselves having shared what I felt were the "take-aways" and "carry-with-yous" that make this type of event all the more perfect for being.

The ever-popular Fight Workshop