Hi Amy,
I am in a similar situation. Was working on devised multi-media presentations with my after school drama club for my Theatre Education Masters. Thesis They were going to perform these devised pieces as a pre-show to our main production, The Wizard of Oz, an of course all of it is postponed for sure (and possibly cancelled). Now I am thinking of transforming these pieces to a purely digital format with no live performance piece.
Have you considered digital storytelling as a platform for these collaborative pieces? I highly recommend Megan Alrutz's book, Digital Storytelling (available on Amazon). She is a theatre artist from UT, Austin, and an innovator in the genre of digital storytelling. She lays out very practical advice and shares devising activities and methods that lead students into creating digital tellings of personal narratives. It's powerful work and something that the students can achieve working at a distance from each other.
Center for Digital Storytelling in Berkeley, CA is also a good resource. Find them at
www.storycenter.org. Click on the Stories tab, and you can see sample stories. They do workshops, provide curriculum, and store digital stories on their website.
Digital stories are something that could be shown online. Perhaps students could hold an audience talk back through Zoom, and students could still journal about their process. I have written a whole curriculum based on this style of digital theatre. Please let me know if you would like more info.
Amy Penney
apenney@ausdk12.orgAlbany, CA
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Amy Penney
Albany Middle School
Richmond CA
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Original Message:
Sent: 03-18-2020 20:56
From: Amy Rawlins
Subject: IB Theatre Collaborative Theatre Project
Our school district is closed "indefinitely", and I am scrambling trying to make accommodations for my 2nd year IB theatre students who were supposed to present their "Collaborative Theatre Project" tomorrow. For non-IB teachers...In essence, it is a playmaking piece they create collaboratively, present for a selected audience, do a talk back with the audience, and write a portfolio/journal about the entire process. The IB has extended our submission deadline, but... I'm not really sure how to meet all the requirements of the task while we are out of school indefinitely. They can't get together to actually perform, let alone do it in front of an audience. I'm looking for extremely creative ideas (preferably from other IB theatre teachers - but am open to suggestions from anyone) about how to guide my students to complete this task. Thank you so much for any help/advice/ideas you can offer.
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Amy Rawlins
Theatre Teacher
Decatur High School
Decatur, GA
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