Chris Meads

USING Online PLATFORMs TO FACILITATE LEARNERS’ EXPLORATION OF PLAYTEXTS

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 next 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 that 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.