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

Why Dramatic-Science?

I have been looking for a copy of this for ages.  This was my final "thesis" for my undergraduate Ed Degree, and goes a long way to explain the history behind my handle "@dramaticscience".  Just thought I'd share for those who are passionate about the Theatre, or about Science Education.

Link to the original document through HERE

Cloud 9

I recently spent two days at a campus/hamlet in a rural town in Eastern Alberta called "Rosebud". The town has existed now for some time in the collective subconscious of most of the people I've spoken to about it in Calgary, due in large part to the quality and accessibility of their "Theatre". But this post is not about them. (however you can learn more about them by choosing this link: http://www.rosebudtheatre.com/index.html)

A view from the road (moving about the campus) at Rosebud
The clouds on the horizon brought snow, similar to the clouds in Part 2 of this blog.

What was special about this trip was that it was the result of ACSI (http://www.acsi.org/) and the vision they have for arts in education approaching Rosebud School for the Arts to host a two-day retreat for students in member schools to attend workshops on how to "tell important stories".  This brought together students from Calgary Alberta, Drayton Valley Alberta, Kooteny British Columbia and this one other place distant that I can't recall at this moment.  The students ranged from grade 8 to grade 12, both male and female.

What was important about this trip as moment in time for teaching was that upon arrival the students were handed a name-tag with a schedule on the back and were welcomed and blessed by the ubiquitous ACSI representative Dr. Phil Hills.  That was all anyone got...

Let's put this in perspective.  Rosebud is a small town.  The campus for the theatre school covers three of the four corners of the town (roughly 3 city-blocks in any direction).  The students have not been here before, nor are their any large sign around saying "please walk this way."  The instructions were:  You have your class listings, and a name of a building. Find some friendly people, they're all around and they know the place well.  Ask them, they'll give you directions.  There's a welcome sign on every door you might need to be in.  If you're going to be late, use public transit. It's free.  Oh, and there is a completely uninsured trampoline on one of the sites, so don't tell anyone when you use it.  Your chaperons are free to wander as they wish.

This is Public Transit in Rosebud.  It's free.

Freedom, the outdoors, lack of walls and bells, the ability to talk to strangers, roaming free with coed teenagers from out of town of a prime "socializing" age... oh look, a black bird in the reeds of an Oxbow Lake...

It's a wonder that anyone got to any workshop at all, right..? Actually, wrong.  It's not a wonder at all... this style of teaching is 100% 21st Century education.  It smacks of all the right tools for engaging a 21st Century student.

So now the icing -- my cell phone had no coverage out there in the Boonies, and though I had my iPad with me at all times, it never occurred to me to check if there was a network available.  It became a tool for focus rather than an element of distraction... and I, along with several others, put away my phone and became present. 


Present.  What a lovely word.  So important when storytelling, and so-much the reason I think that Rosebud has developed a solid reputation for fine theatre-art.  It helps that it's a beautiful town nestled in what appears to be an ancient lake-bed with a river valley anastimosed on a line of remnant hills reminding us of the ancient and beautiful creation around us... (I was once a geologist, every so often I get stratigraphic-reflux... sorry)

My point, I guess, is that I didn't once have to speak to a student about being where they needed to be, or about getting there on-time... because time didn't really matter much.  The teaching that needed to happen was closer to mentoring them on how to be a good neighbour as they moved through the community.  I had to show them how to be aware of the world around us, how important it is for Grade 8 and 9 science students to really comprehend the majesty of a water system and the morphology of the river... sorry; there I go again...

I want to break some rules and share one more picture.  This one is of three students, in three different grades, from three different schools preparing for an improvised presentation that will illustrate Laban's 7 Efforts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laban_Movement_Analysis)  Body language really tells this story which happened more often than not throughout the course of the workshops.  By design.  By necessity.  By accident.

Was every workshop perfect?  No.  Engaging for all?  Absolutely not.  The students I took responded mostly with the reflection that:  "We got to show others our story, and they liked it."  Speaking of the work they did to show off the One-Act play we derived over the past four months (one lunch-hour per week).  For teenagers, it's still about relationships, and getting feedback.

And Rosebud was primed for that.  What does an actor enjoy more than the applause at the end of the show; the validation that their work had personal meaning to someone else.  When that personal meaning can be faith derived we've found a bit of the kingdom, and that puts me on "Cloud 9".

I can't possibly capture all the wonderful things that happened these two days, nor will I ever reveal the traumatic nightmares that came for two-days post-trip as my body recovered from being around adolescent theatre-students...  I would like to say that if you get the chance, the show is great, the food is excellent, and the town is a delight not to be missed.

---

Part 2

The Cloud

After using the iPad to capture several photos and video my next experiment was to use my vast array of "cloud" providers to ensure that, having filled up my iPad, I could empty it out and quickly use the information on any computer that I might be near at the time.

Here are my favorites:

1. Dropbox:  Linked to my PC's desktop so the files sync automatically between them.  Free, so the space is somewhat limited.  The first attempt to upload files went -- okay.  Some files were too large to be uploaded.
2. Google Drive: (aka Picasa) using a PC I was able to see my iPad and thereby bring files over from local media and upload into Picasa.  It was labourious and slow, but at least I could store the bigger files.
3. Box.net:  great iPad app, but some irritation with the work-flow, and some issues with the output.  The file size again (for free) is a limiter and the upload process does not occur in the background so any interruption means having to restart certain files over again.  Most annoying feature - it renames files so if something doesn't upload you have to make an educated guess to which file it was...  So why use it?  Nice integration, 50GB space for free.
4. Skydrive:  the other three did what I needed them to do, so I didn't bother.  Not enough integration with the other apps to make this one worthwhile.
5. iCloud: My photostream is set to only accept pictures and not video (which is nice, because I only have 5 free GB).  Unfortunately everything goes in automatically and to save space I'm often having to delete files twice.  I always get my files to where I want them, and I always know what's there though.  I love this feature.

So the problem now is:  which do I decide to spend my money on?  I can't stay on the Lite versions forever?  Can I?

Space Invaders

This happened today, as a result of some amount of intentional planning of space, class structure and project guidance.

My Grade 9's arrived today, and before I had a chance to welcome them (I was finishing up the creation of a quiz on light design for Grade 7s) they had started work using and modifying the space as they required.

They are working to design a set for a classic play, from which they will perform a brief scene. There was one guiding handout given at the outset, and since then it has been very much student guided and paced.

Document here: Drama 9 Directing Project

What to notice about the picture:

a) where the couch is.
b) how the chairs are arranged
c) number of students/size of space
d) accessories in the room

Pro's:

No start-up time lost
Engaged now for over 30 minutes
Helped one student on a personal project using Google Sketch-Up (which he will be using to create his 3D stage model

Cons:

I don't feel needed.
I have to be available, but want to get other design work done.
I'm discovering how superficial my needs as a teacher are...

The hard part now is to know when to engage a group, and when to let them "go".

Three Sides to Every Coin

In the recent past our school opened a new wing for our Jr. High students to enjoy.  As we took our fledglings under our new wing we hoped to see development toward a new and innovative approach to the system called "school".

Created on the iPad2 by @dramaticscience with cinemagr.am

My own goals included:
a) the ability of students to modify their space to suit their learning needs
b) the ability for teachers to modify their space to suit their learning needs
c) the ability for all to use technology that was appropriate to them
d) the ability for all to disrupt the status quo to discover new ways of doing age-old things.

...backfire...

It worked well, but it's happening in the wrong places, or for the wrong reasons.

From wikipedia:
A back-fire or backfire is an explosion produced by a running internal combustion engine that occurs in the air intake or exhaust system rather than inside the combustion chamber. The same term is used when unburned fuel or hydrocarbons are ignited somewhere in the exhaust system. A visible flame may momentarily shoot out of the exhaust pipe. Either condition causes an objectionable popping noise, together with possible loss of power and forward motion.

But a coin has two sides doesn't it?  When I sit back to look at this scenario it is easy to see both.

powered by Fotopedia

Side 1 @dramaticscience: This wk stdnts have switched their own scheds around, prioritized work-time over reg class time, & assumed control of learning life.#yay?

Side 2 @dramaticscience:  I.O.W. they skipped drama class to work on science projects last minute. Am I kewl with that? #morethanyoumightexpect

Side 3
But there's a third side, isn't there? The side of the coin that connects the two sides.  The side that circles both, and the side that you can carefully and precariously balance the coin on.  That's the side that we tend to forget about.  That's the side that sometimes we need to look at.

When we don't go together in a unified direction, when we don't support each other as we take risks to innovate, to improve, and to progress then we end up on two sides of the same coin, and that means we will fight to decide which side is up.

The tendency is to want to be on one side or the other.  Why not bring the two sides together and stand together on the third?  Perhaps then we'll prevent the backfires.

Return of the Living Heads

I arrived after lunch today to the strangest collection of students outside my door.

I love it when students arrive at the door eager to get to work. When no one has to ask (with that standard nasally cadence) "what are we doing today?" Instead they show up and let me know what they are doing today.

I've put Art and Drama together before, but with the addition of Social Studies we now have a project with relevance, personality, and strange characters.

These students will spend the next hour telling the stories of ancient Athens as though they went to school there. They will do so by writing poetry and singing, dancing and chanting chorally, while pantomiming the crucial elements of the story... Language Arts connections anyone?

More importantly they will be engaged, differentiated, collaborative and creative because they want to be, NOT because they were told to.

Well, that's the continued hope anyway. I'm happy (as are they no doubt) that they don't have to do any of this for homework.

Authentic Yearning

Click Here to FF to the Media!

Every year our drama program struggles to create a space for students to use film media to convey their stories, and examine their processes.

Problem 1:  They don't want to film at school.  There's no where good.
Problem 2:  They don't want to story-board.  What's the point?  With digital technology we can just take one long shot and splice them together afterward
Problem 3:  They don't want to tell a story.  It's more fun for us to look at ourselves making silly faces on camera than stick to a script.

Been there?

With the advent of an iPad classroom, and the willingness to open up a project to something beyond getting a mark here is what has happened, and how:

The Story

---

Problem 1:  Mandate a project with a note home from parents that no students are allowed to film at home.  That's work to be done in class.

Problem 2:  Create a project where you charge them for the film that they use.  For my students I charge them $0.80 per minute of digital film.  I don't really charge them, but I make them keep track of it in a budget.  At the end of the project their mark is scaled between a ratio of how well they were able to meet the bench-marks (good story telling, coherent story, likeability) and how much it cost.  They are to make 10 minute films.  They can be shorter, but must not be one second longer after editing.


Problem 3:  Examine the mystery genre.  Split them into groups of four or five and then lead them to these two sites:
a) The 5 Deadly Sins of Amateur Film Making
b) The film techniques of Alfred Hitchcock

Having approached each of the problems in this fashion start them off looking at Problem 3 with the understanding that this is a problem of the past that they are certainly more than talented enough to over come.  Give them time and the resources to investigate these sites in their groups and then create some time to share the more interesting details they discovered.

Then announce the project: "We're going to be hosting the School 10 Minute Film Festival, and your films will be featured just like at an industry Gala Event".  The look on their faces when they realized that this project was something that mimicked the film industry was one of excitement.  As soon as I stopped the pitch the creativity started.

The Yearning

---

Quick note:  All media appearing below belongs to and was posted online (without encouragement) by my Grade 9 students.

 What happened in our class is that as soon as they understood there was a budget they started to come up with other things they should charge for.  For instance, several students are excellent editors, but other students have no idea where to begin with film editing.  So they wanted to charge for editing time from the experts in the Career Technology and Society class.  They knew of other actors they'd like to include in their project, but they needed to charge a rate to get them in their movie.

Mostly they wanted this project to mirror the things that actually happen for film-makers. Including and not limited to creating their own movie posters and the following "teaser-trailers". Stay tuned, we plan on streaming their videos!

I can't guarantee that this will happen every time this project is pitched, but for these guys it was working.

Finally, tell them that because this is a festival format they must meet certain deadlines and be able to speak to the work they are doing at the end of the project.

For the last two weeks they kicked me out of class so they could work toward their project goals.  They approached me only for permission to film in certain areas of our school (just like film-makers acquire licences they had to get licences).  And there are posters, trailers, and just a whole lot of excitement surrounding these films, because they want to do something valuable and authentic.

The Man in the Shadows (Teaser) from Grant on Vimeo.

I want you to participate in their film festival too, so I'm inviting you now to follow us on Twitter, keep up to date with this blog, and watch for a date (following Feb 7 when we will live-cast our event).

Peace.

Ancient Greece and the Theatre

Mention "thespian" to a middle schooler and they all crack up. Humor is such an important method to teaching the younglings, especially when it borders on the inappropriate.

Mention teaching theatre history to middle school students to most drama teachers and you might get a very similar response... Still I have decided to give teaching theatre history to Grade 6 a shot to see what happens...

My Grade 6 lab rats seemed like a great place to start particularly because they are studying ancient Athens in their Social Studies Curriculum.

Working with @bar_qu means that I also have a partner in crime allowing me to continue my xcurricular pursuits. This time around though I was sure to Incorporate the Art teacher.

To be clear what I know of ancient Greece is very similar to what most of my students remember about being thespians... It has something or other to do with myths and "phallusies".

So I asked my students directly if they would like to receive a lesson and worksheet based on note collecting from a PowerPoint I found on "Ancient Greece for Kids" or if they would just prefer to research and perform their own Ancient Greek play about "A Day in the Life of an Ancient Athenian". (credit to @bar_qu for that one)

Funny... Only six of forty said they'd prefer me and notes over self-directed research... Currently I'm battling the urge to feel hurt and the urge to feel elated.

I assigned them small groups (SOLE methodology) with one tablet per group. I gave them a Greek letter as a group name for them to look up so they could inscribe it for themselves on their books. Then I asked, "what makes for an Ancient Greek Production?"

All the World's A Stage

They have currently had only 90 minutes to work but already they are telling me about:

• Comedies, Tragedies, and Satyr


• That the Agora was a pretty cool place to gather


• That our school Theatre is actually a lot like a Greek theatre and in fact some of the names are still the same.


• That men were the stage folk, and that if we're going to be doing this we're also going to need some masks.

I am a verbose lecturer at the best of times. They could have listened to me describe these things for an hour, retained less and had less fun. I guess I'm elated after all.

Currently they are taking pictures of our theatre to compare with schematics of a Dionysian Theatre and putting it all together using "Show Me"... But mostly they are eager to to start writing their scripts.

One girl asked if I was going to let the girls act? "Of course" I said, to which she responded: "Even though that wouldn't be authentic?"

Another girl asked if they would be allowed to use the social text to gather information to put in her play.

Folks, I can't make this stuff up... Oh yeah, and THIS (what your are reading) is my lesson plan.

The art teacher agreed ahead of time to give them time to build masks. The SS teacher will use his time to research A Day in the Life... And I will use the drama time to build costumes and scenes for our burgeoning chorus of players.

And I couldn't be more pleased with the learning, engagement, and attention/retention of details. Yes, I had a couple of Spartans vying for attention as they practiced for the Trojan wars. Man were they disappointed when they discovered that the Greeks let all the action occur off-stage; another detail they'll be sure to recall if there happened to be a test on this down the road.

Next up: A blog entry on why I'm making grade 7 students do monologues from Shakespeare's First Folio...

---

The App' I discussed above is called Show Me. There are other great apps out there like this for free. This just happened to be available to the kids on the Apple Cart at school.

If all else FAILS improvise.

Today was the culmination of a project that (though not ill conceived) was certainly bred from a trial and error hodgepodge of good intention and the type of foresight you might expect from a gnat.  Gnats have foresight, I'm sure of it, it's just not very much I presume.  I did not look this up on wikipedia so please don't quote me on that.

Anyway...  Our journey along the path of mystery-story-telling-for-grade-6-science-students came to an end today, and that WAS planned for, and deliberate and rather last minute as school ends for the season come Friday.

Last week we used technology to create, manage, and curate EVIDENCE that students would provide to those who did not participate in the project.  The non-participators (heretofore referred to as: investigators) would then take said-evidence and try and solve the mystery story that was created.

Things needed to succeed?

We successful stored date, properly catalogued it but due to (again) this boiling pot of good intention and gnat-sight we have not yet found an effective or efficient method for retrieving data from a class set of iPads.  We leave our data at the whim of the Apple Cart users.  (aside: we call it the "Apple Cart" because Apple makes iPads and we put them on one big rechargeable wagon.  Clever right?)  I digress.

Today we arrived raring to go, only to find that our data had been wiped for an unanticipated software upgrade.

Four weeks of work finally stored and it was all for naught... or was it?

What to do.  I have 20 sixth grade students ready to participate in a project they have been waiting patiently to close for four weeks, and another 20 sixth grade students who have lost their proverbial mittens and didn't know where to find them.

This is where good structure, and a bit of flexibility comes in.

Because the students spent four structured weeks building the stories they had timelines, story-boards, documents, and mind-maps of the work they had done.  They were intimately familiar with the work that went into building an evidence bank (that was sadly wiped) and they were able to tell a good story.

Digital Curation

With minimal preparation they were able to welcome in a flurry of eager investigators and lead them through a story our drama students had carefully crafted collectively and collaboratively.  In a style similar to 20 questions the investigators were allowed to ask about the evidence they would have seen and then report their assumptions and conclusions to an online Google Form that would help them document their thinking.

After one failed attempt (which we applauded due to the fact that it inevitably led to successful learning so we could just as easily have labeled it the more PC "practice attempt") the students were able to (within 30 minutes) visit two different groups, hear two different mystery stories, and document two different conclusions with absolutely no direct intervention from resident adult "expert".

Things that were lost: physical data
Things that were gained: an adequate end to a project, and a set of data illustrating student thinking, and students capable of being flexible in how and when they show their learning.  They did a great job cleaning up after the mess that had been created.

Cleaning Up

One important item that I have purposefully left until now to reference is that there was one group who did not use their data.  Rather than trust the school "blanket" of iPads they chose to use their own personal devices (privately because of course they wouldn't want to get caught having their own personal devices out on school time) and so when they arrived today they had their entire project organized, itemized, and digitized for dissemination.  Suffice it to say, our investigators were over-joyed to be allowed to interact with this group.

I have, myself, compiled my own digital portfolio of work on my own personal device.  As you may have already realized I am working at incorporating a strong and appropriate use of modern technology in the drama classroom, and documenting processes and strategies for making work -- well -- work.

What follows is a short list of links and apps that have helped make the process easier and more "expressive".

My digital booklet showing the students' good work:
http://ebooks.scribblepress.com/book.php?g=LXLMZ4ZN

The app used to create the book on the iPad:

The app used to create annotations in the pictures shown (and published):

The apps are both free - and I like them.