Making theatre online

When classes were cancelled due to the current pandemic in early March, I, as a European student, simply tried to get back to Germany as fast as possible and be safe!

All the way home though I was quite worried about my studies in Falmouth, as a practical performance-oriented course would surely be difficult to teach online. However, how the University and my tutors have handled this situation has been better than I could have expected.

Of course, not being able to be together physically in the Uni’s studios and rehearse to create our Ensemble Performances we were originally tasked to do had a huge impact on what we actually could do. I was very excited after hearing that we were now supposed to record our performances and turn them into videos; and after handing in the finished piece last week, I feel quite proud of what we came up with.

Being adaptable is a great skill to have in both the performing arts and every other industry!

Although theatre is meant to be performed and experienced live, I appreciated this opportunity to explore a different medium and format, and at the moment, all of us have to learn to be pretty flexible in life. Being adaptable is a great skill to have in both the performing arts and every other industry!

We had weekly video chat tutorials with our tutors. These were like in-class feedback sessions, just that this time we had to send in material beforehand so they could look at it and then we would go through it together. These check-in chats worked really well and helped us bit by bit to create our piece. They also gave us a weekly schedule to work to, which was helpful because it could be (and still is) a little overwhelming sometimes to make your own structure and timetable when you are used to having classes together and then just booking rehearsals outside of those. But the reality of theatre out there in the real world and not in a privileged Uni environment is that most of the time, you won’t always be able to be there in person, and, unless it is a big production, you would probably have two other jobs going on at the same time. And you still have to make it work.

So overall, I think that while we were all frustrated at the circumstances and not being able to meet up, we and the Uni figured out a way through it and it has been a pretty good learning experience.