For my forecasting project, I wanted to explore the potential of live online performance as a genre in preparation for our return to online learning here in Hong Kong! I researched the genre of ‘Cyberformace’, and created my own Cyberformance for young audiences called ‘Back To School’. I have created a video-essay to discuss both my research and my performance, and though the full performance is not included in the video-essay, it is available online, including the Q and A session with my audience afterwards. I hope you enjoy it!
The transcript from the video essay can be found HERE.
Hey Suzzie!
Thanks for the very cool assignment; the performing arts are subjects that are quickly being overlooked in this new normal… as someone who did theatre both in high school and in the community, I was glad to see you taking it on! I found your video essay very informative in giving me information about cyberformances; was this your first attempt at putting one on? I love the masks as well; gives confident performers a new persona and shy ones something to hide behind! Did students make their own masks or were they supplied? Could that be a cross-curricular assignment with an Art class? I’m taking it that you had a chance to do some scaffolding in person about the performances we saw of your students; how will you handle that if you are 100 percent online? Do you worry about overloading students who are new to theatre or are not great with technology? I know that my daughter had THE WORST experience with drama during the spring as the teacher kept just sending assignment after assignment with no real scaffolding or visual examples for her. And I had worked so hard at getting her to take it and telling her about how much fun I had in high school drama… sigh. I digress…
I really liked the openness of your theatre; it reminded me of pantomime productions with the call and response aspect. Do you see the “open mic” for your audience ever being too much of a distraction, especially with it being a zoom call and people kind of talk all over everyone? Technology wise, what would be the best case set up to make this work for you on a long term basis?
Thanks again for the cool assignment; the arts tend to take a back seat in times like these and I’m glad to see you making sure that they are easily accessible and fun as ever!
Thank you for your comments Greg!
To answer some of your questions;
We shifted to online learning here in February, and so I was teaching online for a LONG time (and we just started back this week again!). The mask performances that were done by the students were performed in about May, at the end of a unit that was taught entirely online. My school has 80 minute lessons, and during our remote learning, we were asked to have live video sessions with our students for the entirety of the lesson. I really attempted to make our lessons as active as possible, and so I decided to try and teach mask remotely. I sent the students tutorials outlining three different methods of mask-making, and they made their masks at home. We then learned the conventions of masked performances by performing them for each other through the use of our cameras as the audience. The students then learned about sound editing, and set about preparing a short solo where they interacted with a prop. Although we did have most of these performed live (which would make them a lot like Cyberformance), a lot of the students chose to film their pieces and submit those instead. I will be teaching this unit again in the coming months and think I’ll shift the performances to a more Cyberformance structure as I love the interactivity of it!
The mask performance ‘Back to School’ was indeed my first real Cyberformance, although I did perform an example of a mask piece online for my students during a live zoom call when they were setting out to create their own. The performance ‘Back to School’ WAS a little hectic with the open microphones and seven children, but that was expected and part of the fun, so it worked out alright. We did an online assembly today at school with 150 students…. and that was a lot more challenging! Although my audience was definitely a home-town crowd, they all said they really liked the way the performance worked, and connected with the character of Lucy.
Moving forward, I am really enjoying the challenge of finding ways to help my students ‘connect’ with one another across the medium of Zoom, and I am looking forward to pushing to mobile potentials of the app by encouraging them to log in on their phones from different spots or, in order to allow them to use tools like tripods or selfie sticks to help them get exactly the shot they want. I do scaffold the activities a lot, and I will often have kids working in their own private breakout rooms on zoom so that I am still able to jump in and help them when they are working on something during class time and need help. I also heavily support any use of tech with things like tutorial videos. That seems to be helping everyone be successful.
It’s been a challenge to do Drama online, but I’m excited to see how far I can take it, and how we might further explore the unique world of Cyberformance!
Suzzie
Please note that I have linked a version of the video essay that is saved in Google Drive in case a copyright claim blocks the sound. It can also be viewed on YouTube here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr6jnQXPOww)
Suzzie