Since 2013 I’ve designed and facilitated a range of blended e-learning models for actors-in-training and aspirant theatre-makers.

This is Part One of the tour, which focuses on my use of virtual technologies to enhance rehearsal room centered processes. Part Two focuses on The Boy Universe, an innovative e-learning model that I designed for East 15 Acting School that involved entirely remote learning, in response to the lockdown circumstances of 2020. You can read Part Two here.

All of the processes that I discuss within this tour were developed with and for learners at East 15 Acting School. Here we go!

USING Online PLATFORM TECHNOLOGIES TO DEEPEN THE GIVEN CIRCUMSTANCE WORK

Actors in training are often visually-led learners. It’s standard practice at East 15 for learners to be encouraged to bring into the rehearsal room photocopied images to illustrate their ideas, which are then added to the walls with bluetac. I’ve never been wholly comfortable with this. Coloured images brighten up the room, but are expensive for students to photocopy. After a short time the images tend to begin to fall from the walls and, inevitably, at the end of a process they need to be removed so that another group can use the room as a neutral space. All evidence of the learners’ hard work and creativity disappears!

Since 2014 I’ve been developing the use of online platforms to support each ensemble’s practical given circumstance work in the rehearsal room and as an additional tool to aid each learner’s preparation process. With online research sharing spaces, we can not only share text and images, but also video clips, sounds and music. Moreover, these images and video clips can be projected onto the walls of the rehearsal room, their sounds and music can be amplified through speakers - the research process becomes much more visceral and experiential. Also, as any large-cast play consists of a network of inter-connected character relationships, it makes sense that helpful information, discoveries and inspirations can be shared among an ensemble of actors to inspire inter-connected choices. The networked form and functionality of online platforms offers a perfect scaffold for this kind of creative endeavour. The image below is the home page of one of the many online research sharing spaces that I have created to support theatre projects at East 15 Acting School. In this instance, it’s a sharing space for Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard…

I’ve learned that the method that you choose to organise a web-based research sharing space is crucial to its success. Its structure should ensure that posting can be as simple and user-friendly as possible. Content should be clearly organised and accessible. You’ll see in the image above that I’ve created four different research ‘topics’, where content appropriate to each topic can be uploaded or experienced by the group. All of the content that has been posted by the group to this online space is in response to the play’s given circumstances. You’ll also see, under the ‘replies’ column, that this group of 15 learners shared, in total, 92 different posts with one another during the first two weeks of the rehearsal process - indicative of how this research space captured the imaginations of the group! Let’s now see some examples of the content that this group of learners curated and shared with one another…

In The Cherry Orchard the character Charlotta Ivanovna mentions that she is in possession of a ‘yellow ticket’. Vera, who was cast as Charlotta Ivanovna within this process, was naturally curious about what exactly Charlotta is referring to. In the post above, Vera shares her discoveries, along with an image of this Russian identification document. This line containing ‘the yellow ticket’ could now be expressed by Vera with truth, specificity and imaginative connection, and Vera’s empathy for the character’s circumstances increased as a result of her discovering this information. Charlotte, who was cast as the same character but played her in different scenes, was inspired by Vera’s post and became curious about Charlotta Ivanovna’s sexuality. In the post below, Charlotte shares her discoveries about lesbian culture within Russia at the turn of the century. This information, in turn, further inspired Vera’s interpretive choices.

Using web platforms as a theatre rehearsal research tool can be quite time intensive for a tutor, not least because it’s important to engage with the space regularly to ensure that it remains a safe and well-managed environment (all of the web platforms that I use with learners have a ‘private’ setting and can only be read by that particular group, myself and another tutor). It’s also good practice to read all of the content that the learners generate!

I’ve found that it’s most effective as a nurturing training tool if you create the opportunity, each day, to discuss with the group new content that has been uploaded overnight. The two examples of posts that I’ve shared with you possess content that is of a high quality, but the overall quality of posting does tend to be consistently good with every project. This is because high quality work shared on a web platform is infectious and tends to incentivise other learners to share work of a similar quality.

Learners who experienced this theatre-making blend discuss how it enhanced their learning and development:

Learner A: “We were encouraged by Chris to research any factual references within the text. We were divided in research groups in order to share our discoveries on Moodle. It was fantastic because a new universe started to appear. Day after day that universe was becoming more and more concrete.”

Learner B: “The specificity and detail we went into once our characters were assigned to us was on a level unlike any I had experienced before.”

Learner C: “I have discovered that this level of detail truly helps me in making the character very real to me, as her own person with her own complex history, faults and blessings. (I hope) that in the end this enables me to give the audience an experience of the character that is similarly true and real.”

Learner D: “Though some of this information can be found in the text, a lot of it is not. It is therefore up to the actor to do research and spend a large amount of time making detailed and text-supported decisions. This work is all important because once it is discovered, once it is physicalized, absorbed and put into early day practice, it must be stored away. Now that I have this new sense of awareness, it means that my research work is essential.”

Learner E: “I quickly learned the importance of focusing my research down to what was important and what was just fluff. The way we used the Moodle site required short, sweet, and concise posts.”

Learner F: “I learned that the difference between an actor’s research and the research I used to do is that an actor’s research requires a much stronger emotional attachment to the information than an intellectual one.”

Learner G: “I was incredibly appreciative of the reminders throughout the research process to keep everything centred on the characters as people. Does this information inform the character? Does this give you something playable? Does this enrich your understanding of this character as a person, not a symbol or metaphor?”

Learner H: “The online Moodle research space reminded us of the importance of sharing - to boost each other’s work.”

Learner I: “Using Moodle also really works well for ensemble work when you’re at home on your own. It kept this line tethered between everyone involved and, in a non-creepy way, we were always together and feeding each other info. This made the world more transparent and into a cohesive landscape and soundscape. I think if we all did this work separately and it wasn’t easily accessible to everyone than we would have had a very different show.”

Learner J: “I’ve always been an eclectic and unsystematic academic, and the use of Moodle helped me to organize and collect my research, as well make the research done by other students accessible and readily available. We all worked towards making the world alive in our creative subconscious, and the amount of helpful research undertaken by everyone really made living in the world of the play that much easier to imagine.”

Learner K: “The Moodle work was crucial to my understanding of the world of the play. I feel like we laid an incredible strong foundation of this world on which we could all build our characters from. The more into the character I grew, the deeper the research settled.”

Learner L: “As an actor, I need a full and complete world in order to live and act within it. I loved developing thorough research within Moodle so that, when it came to acting, I could trust all the information to be present in my subconscious.”

Learner M: “I am a visual learner and visual and image development are a huge part of my process. Therefore, it was extremely beneficial to have the research resources that we did, and applying them to my work helped me feel confident and liberated in my work. By the time tech week came around, I felt absolutely at ease and ready to play in the theatre space.”

The research sharing space in the images above utilised Forum software within the University of Essex’s MOODLE e-learning platform. However, I’ve since discovered that it’s best to offer each learning group whom you work with the choice of using the web platform that they are most familiar with, or that they find most accessible to use. For example, the following images are from the home page of a research sharing space for a 2018 production of Around The World In 80 Days. In this instance, the consensus from the group was the they preferred to use Pinterest as our research home. Each image ‘pin’ on our Pinterest homepage board, if activated, would open up the research content offered by that particular group member.

The following content is from a research sharing space for a 2019 studio production of Her Naked Skin, which explored the British women’s suffrage movement. In this instance, the group preferred to share their research discoveries via Google Docs Cloud Collaboration.

During the early stages of rehearsal, the standard model that tends to be used for actors-in-training to practically present their research to one another is for learners to form into groups, engage in research on a defined topic that relates to the world of the play, and then stand together at the front of the room and present their research to others, usually with the aid of Powerpoint, one group at a time. This approach didn’t feel appropriate for Her Naked Skin. One of my main priorities as a tutor on this project was to help cultivate a strong sense of investment amongst the group for the aims and ideals of the people involved in the suffragette movement, the almost overwhelming obstacles that they encountered, and the extraordinary courage that they demonstrated. The research presentation model that I needed to come up with had to ignite the group’s political passion.

This is how the new research presentation model tht I devised worked…

Initially, I selected eight key events within the British Library’s Women’s Suffrage Timeline, an excerpt from which you can see here. The learners formed into four breakout groups and I invited each group to select the one event that they were most curious to learn more about, with one other event in reserve. After asking each group to see the event of their choosing as one chapter in the overall Women’s Suffrage story, I invited them to research that event through this lens: “What must it have been like to experience this event for the first time?” I explained to the acting company that we would be presenting the work in a different way: each group would create a hub within the rehearsal room - like a market stall - and each hub would be dedicated to illuminating a specific chapter in the story, with images, video clips, sound clips etc. on different laptops. There would be four group hubs in the room and we would all be free to visit any hub of our choosing at any time, and for any length of time, as long as there was always a member of each group ‘minding their stall’. I also invited each group to upload their research content to the online sharing space.

The experience was remarkable. Afterwards, reflecting on this session, the learners expressed how much they had loved being able to choose their own research journey, led by their curiosities. They could engage in more concentrated conversation with their peers and gain a more intimate relationship with the material. They could also return to hubs that they had visited for more information, or to clarify information. They were all surprised that the time had passed so quickly - yet affirmed that they never lost their focus or attention. The experience was much less formal that the standard model for presenting research material, and all the better for it. The students emerged galvanised by the subject matter.

The day prior to the research sharing event, we had visited London together on a research field trip. At an early point in every rehearsal process I always aim to include an opportunity for the group and I to get out of the rehearsal room and experience a field trip together. With Her Naked Skin we visited the Museum of London’s excellent Woman’s Movement exhibition, walked the route that the thousands of ‘Women’s Sunday’ demonstrators took over a hundred years before, and experienced debates within the Houses of Parliament. A research field trip of this kind is invariably an important catalyst in transforming a group of learners into a supportive and generous theatre ensemble.

USING Online Platforms and emerging digital technologies To DEEPEN learners’ ARTISTIC INVOLVEMENT IN THEATRE PRODUCTION PROCESSES

Over recent years I’ve become especially interested in exploring how web platforms and emerging online digital technologies can enable actors-in-training to be more active artistic co-creators within theatre-making processes. I’d now like to focus on two specific theatre processes that I led for East 15 Acting School in 2016, as these best illustrate this practice: Carol Ann Duffy’s adaptation of Everyman and a devised Christmas show Fairytales Of New York. We’ll begin with Everyman.

Many of the characters within Carol Ann Duffy’s adaptation of Everyman are, on the page, quite abstract. For example, at the outset of his journey toward redemption, Everyman’s circle of friends are simply described as ‘Fellowship’, he encounters characters such as ‘Good Deeds’, ‘Knowledge’ and groups of characters given collective, abstract titles, such as ‘Goods’. An abstract can be quite unfulfilling for an actor to play. Whilst it was important that our actors should honour the dramatic function of each of these characters, it was equally important - to the acting company and to me, the director - that each of these characters possessed an existence, memories, desires and a soul.

The images below illustrate our early steps in achieving this. The first image is the home page of the online research sharing space that I created especially for the project. Each actor in the company was offered an ‘ideas sharing’ thread for each character whom they played. Next are examples of images and photographs that members of the ensemble shared to illustrate how they saw their different characters, inspired by a field trip to Shoreditch in East London and Selfridges department store in Oxford Street.

The image below is an example of how the company drew their character images together into digital mood board collages, in this case a collage created by the group of actors who played ‘Fellowship’. The ensemble then created a PDF containing mood board collages for each character, or character grouping. This PDF was then shared with the costume designer and the set designer, acting as a visual touchtone for a creative conversation between the ensemble, the costume designer, the set designer and myself. I’ve also included a production shot from the opening Fellowship sequence within the show, in which Everyman and his Fellowship are performing a raucous hip hop number, to backing music mixed live by DJ Venus in her DJ booth, a set item created especially for our show (she’s directly behind the actor playing Everyman in the photograph) .

The orthodox approach within theatre production processes is that the director and designer will meet, their conversations will then inspire a series of aesthetic choices that the acting company will be presented with on the first day of rehearsal and that they will work within thereafter. I’ve never been wholly comfortable with this approach. For example, a character’s costume isn’t merely about aesthetics, it impacts upon the way that the actor moves, it is inspired by the character’s experiences and it expresses the way that the character inhabits and survives within their world. If offered a set of specific but nurturing parameters, a structured way of expressing their ideas, and equipped with the character’s given circumstances, actors-in-training can often devise character-driven clothing and prop ideas that a creative team would perhaps have never otherwise considered. In my experience, production designers have not only been open to this approach, but have welcomed it.

Moreover, the shows that I have directed that have utilised web platforms and digital technologies to act as a conduit for ideas exchange between the acting company and the designer have possessed especially rich, detailed and nuanced visual aesthetics. The content below illustrates the significant impact that the Everyman company’s ‘character inspiration’ posts had on this production’s visual aesthetic. First, Lisa’s shares her ideas for the character ‘Knowledge’, and then Charlotte for her character ‘Good Deeds’.

More information about this production of Everyman, and many more production photographs, can be found here.

I was able to develop this methodology further with Fairytales of New York, a Christmas show specially devised for East 15 Acting School in 2016.

The conceit behind the show was this:

It’s Christmas Eve 1946. New York’s WRLD Radio presents the First Annual Ford Hour Christmas Special! Eleven of America’s brightest stars of tomorrow, from radio, Broadway and the motion pictures, are brought together for one night only to perform four American fairy stories by L. Frank Baum (The Wonderful Wizard of Oz) in a live radio broadcast from New York’s Radio City Music Hall, taking audiences to the limits of their imagination - and beyond! 

In developing the show, our first task as a company was to choose the four American Fairy Stories that we most enjoyed from L. Frank Baum’s larger collection of tales. Baum’s American Fairy Stories are set in non-specific U.S. locations at the turn of the century. To suit the show’s conceit (and for fun!) we chose to set the stories specifically in early 1940s New York. To add era-authenticity, we decided to pepper the script with the wonderful words and phrases that you only hear in screwball film comedies of the era. To achieve this, I selected six classic U.S. screwball comedies from the period, the group organised themselves into pairs, and I invited each pair to choose one film from the list, watch it together, and create a list of the era-specific words and phrases spoken in the film that captured their imaginations. First you can see the home page of the online sharing space that I created: notice again how I organised it into particular posting threads bespoke to the needs of this project. The next image illustrates the learners’ posts in response and the six films that acted as their inspiration. Below these images are a post from Robin inspired by It’s A Wonderful Life! and a post inspired by Bringing Up Baby from Cheeto.

Next, the acting company needed to create characters: a group of young, talented performers on the cusp of fame who would perform the radio broadcast on Christmas Eve 1942. I thought that it would be fun if these fictional characters were composites of genuine stars of early 1940s radio and film. To lay a firm foundation, I invited each cast member to research two stars from the the era and prepare a 20 minute practical workshop for the other group members to experience, with film or audio clips to illustrate the particular acting skills or performance techniques that these stars of yesteryear possessed. In the images below left you’ll see where each student uploaded their ‘Actors’ Craft Appreciation Sharing’ content in advance of their workshop, for the other group members to use as a reference. You can then see an example of the content that the students shared. In this post, Charlotte discusses the particular performance qualities of the actor Jean Arthur.

Inspired by their research into these 1930s/1940s stars, the company then created fictional ‘stars of tomorrow’ whom they could embody within the show. We engaged in a long-form improvisation in which our acting company’s fictional stars each auditioned for the opportunity to take part in the live radio broadcast and shared their particular performance skills. The images below are a selection of the fictional resumes that each cast member brought along to this audition improvisation, and which subsequently acted as a guide for the show’s costume designer (each learner’s guidance notes to the costume designer are included). The acting company’s character preparation was tremendously thorough and inventive and many of the often hilarious discoveries that we made within this mock-audition improvisation eventually found their way into the Fairytales of New York performance script.

The success of the mock-audition improvisation led to us rehearsing the show almost entirely in character, over a period of five weeks. This resulted in a joyous and highly creative rehearsal room atmosphere and, equally, contributed so much to the wit, relationship detail and ensemble spirit that the show ultimately possessed.  

There was a space within the web platform for the acting company to share their research into early 1940s radio broadcasting techniques. In her post below, Hsin-Huei shares her discoveries about the art of live Foley sound effects. Hsin-Huei became quite the Foley expert: she passed on her skills to the other members of the acting company, collaborated with the sound design team and the show’s designer, and we eventually had the luxury of two long trestle tables filled with Foley objects to play with throughout the rehearsal process. Much of the humour within the eventual show came from each fictional star’s success (or lack of!) in operating these Foley items under the pressure of a live broadcast.

Our fictional radio show needed a sponsor and Matthew’s idea, shared in his post below left - ‘sponsored by the Ford Motor Company and Servel Refrigerators’ - was too good to lose. This extract from the script illustrates how our sponsor was introduced into the broadcast. I’ve also included an image of the beautiful large wooden sign that hung above the stage action during the show. All of the content within the sign was devised by the acting company and then lovingly created by the show’s design team.

To help bring a sense of authenticity to the show’s central conceit of being a live radio broadcast from Christmas Eve 1942, the acting company researched actual radio broadcasts from the era and uploaded authentic broadcast content to the online sharing space that we could harvest for the show. Below you’ll see two posts, in which Kathryn, Matt and Cheeto share audio weblinks for authentic in-show advertising messages and jingles for real products from the era. This content that they found was (unintentionally) hilarious, but also beautiful in its authenticity and sincerity. With a few nips and tweaks, content of this kind was incorporated into the performance script almost verbatim. You can see an example from the script below.

Robin was curious about radio quiz shows from the era. In his post below left he shares some of his research discoveries, which inspired the fictional quiz that featured within our show: The Better Half, in which a young married couple’s knowledge of U.S. Christmas traditions and rituals was tested as they competed to win the show’s star prize: a brand new Servel refrigerator. An extract from this part of the script sits alongside Robin’s post, along with a production still that illustrates one of the audience participation prompt cards (others were ‘LOUD APPLAUSE!’ ‘OOOOH!’ ‘AHHHH!’ etc.) that were created by the show’s design team and which were used heavily within The Better Half sequence.

Alongside the four L. Frank Baum American fairy stories, spoof advertisements for genuine (yet sometimes unbelievable!) products from the era, and the quiz show The Better Half, peppered throughout the evening were festive 1940s songs (Everybody's Waiting For The Man With The Bag; Jing-Jing-A-Ling; (Baby) It's Cold Outside; Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas) performed by the ensemble with live musical accompaniment, an Ice Hockey sports broadcast, a dance marathon, and a series of ‘War of the Worlds' inspired weather forecasts. STAND-BY and ON AIR signs illuminated and flashed, and we used radio mikes that were customised to look authentically 1940s and which included our (fictional) radio station logo (the acting company were comprised of students from all corners of the globe training within the school's MFA International course - hence WRLD).    

Above right is a short promotional video that I created to publicise the show. It should give you a strong sense of the show's energy and spirit...   

More information about the Fairytales of New York production, along with many more production photographs, can be found here.

USING MUSIC AS A COLLABORATIVE TOOL THROUGH ONLINE DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES

I’m passionate about music. I’m constantly listening to it or playing it. As an acting tutor and theatre director, my inspirations often come from music and I’ve found that this is equally the case with the actors-in-training whom I’ve coached and directed.

The first image below is of a post that Breanna submitted to the Everyman research sharing space, in which she shares some video clips of songs that were acting as an inspiration for the creation of her Fellowship character, whom she called Sinead. Breanna’s post inspired me to develop ways that music, through online digital technologies, could be integrated more fully into theatre rehearsal processes to inspire actors-in-training.

Over recent years, I have created a bespoke Spotify collaborative music playlist for each project that I have led at East 15, and you can see examples of these different playlists alongside Breanna’s post above. I tend to add a selection of music to kick-start the Spotify playlist just prior to a project commencing as it’s invariably a useful tool to help the group gain a sense of the spirit and tone of the overall show. However, as these playlists are collaborative, the group members can also add music or songs that they find inspiring too. I always play music ‘on shuffle’ from the project’s Spotify playlist each morning as the learners enter the room and within our tea breaks. We can also draw upon our Spotify playlist for background music when we engage in group warm-ups and exercises. The content within the playlist can equally act as a helpful short-hand for the learners and I when exchanging creative ideas.

Whilst teaching and directing at East 15 Acting School I have taught myself to use Cuelab, the digital software that is commonly used by theatre sound designers. Over recent years I have created a Cuelab managed music and sound design for every East 15 theatre project that I have led, with content frequently drawn from each acting company’s collaborative Spotify playlist. Introducing the Cuelab sound and music design at a relatively early stage in the rehearsal process helps the ensemble to become more fully immersed in the play’s atmosphere as they rehearse and, in addition, allows us to define and tighten the production’s rhythm long before the show opens. As a result, the company are able to enjoy a much more relaxed, organised and time-efficient technical rehearsal. Above far right is an example of a Cuelab sound design workspace that I created for the Her Naked Skin project, alongside the collaborative Spotify playlist that we curated during our rehearsal process. You can see that many of the songs that group members contributed to the Spotify playlist eventually featured within the show’s music/sound design.

USING Online LEARNING TECHNOLOGIES AND STUDENT-DIRECTED LEARNING MODELS To ENHANCE PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE WORKSHOPS

Thanks to the web, there's an abundance of online information that emerging actors and aspirant theatre makers can tap into to help kickstart their careers.

But the question many learners ask is, “Where do I start?” And how might learners bring together all of the online information that they ultimately find in a user-friendly form?

Make It Happen!, an innovative series of professional practice workshops that I have developed and regularly led at East 15 Acting School, offers a solution…

Here's how it works. Within a Make It Happen! introductory session the learners form together into small groups, first identifying the industry-related questions that most arouse each group's curiosity e.g. What support networks for emerging theatre companies might we tap into? How might we go about finding a theatre producer? How might we gain advice on how to produce work ourselves? What mentoring programmes are available that might support our professional development? Next, over the course of a week, each group curates information and weblinks in response to their question and uploads this content to a bespoke web platform. Finally, all groups come together to present the highlights of their discoveries, having collectively created a unique and comprehensive industry-knowledge web archive, accessible to all Make It Happen! participants. They can continue to build this living online resource together, post-training. Companies of the 21st century want graduates who can source, filter and use existing knowledge to create new knowledge (Allison Littlejohn, director of the Caledonian Academy, Glasgow Caledonian University) and Make It Happen! helps to equip learners with these skills.

Thank-you for reading PART ONE of this tour of my e-learning practice.

In PART TWO I discuss The Boy Universe, an innovative distanced learning model that I designed in response to the UK’s lockdown circumstances of 2020. You can experience PART TWO of the tour HERE.