Like many programs at George Brown College, Acting for Media is designed to be a hands-on, collaborative learning experience - one where students work together to hone their skills in movement, voice, acting technique and using new media technologies. So when the COVID-19 pandemic triggered campus closures, program co-ordinator and instructor Anna MacKay-Smith was concerned about how her academic area could make the leap to alternative delivery. As she points out, "Being in the studio and working with others is so important for emerging actors."
Getting creative
While she may have been doubtful at first, it didn't take long for MacKay-Smith to realize that her academic team and their students had an important professional advantage: boundless creativity.
"We're artists and we think creatively," she says. "Now I'm asking myself, if I'm teaching this concept, how can I do it in a way that's outside my comfort zone or my current knowledge? Can I come up with something that is interesting and exciting for students? I feel challenged in a positive way."
For her Basics of Acting class, MacKay-Smith has been doing one-on-one coaching sessions with her students via Skype as they work on developing monologue performances. At the end of the semester, students will submit their self-taped performances for review.
Ready for their close-up
While working one-on-one makes sense for monologues, it's not suitable for classes like Meisner Technique, which is founded on scene partners focusing fully on one another as they repeat the same line back and forth. At first, instructors David Tompa and David Reale weren't sure this method could work online.
"Our experience of video chat was that it can be choppy, laggy or robotic," says Tompa. "But through experimenting, we've found that Zoom provides fairly smooth chat experiences even with many people in the room. It has a pin' feature that lets you limit the video on your screen to only one person (your repetition partner), allowing you to focus on them instead of being distracted by the other students."
Tompa says that while there have been some challenges to teaching this method online, it's also brought some unexpected benefits. Having a close-up view of actors' faces during an exercise can result in a very intimate connection between scene partners, while allowing instructors to catch small nuances in their expressions. One student actor even had a breakthrough and found herself crying as part of her repetition exercise - a level of vulnerability she had not yet achieved in class.
Making the most of the situation
With the Spring semester not far away, MacKay-Smith is already thinking of unconventional ways that students in other acting classes can collaborate remotely. For example, two students could perform a scene that involves their characters talking on the phone - the student actors would actually call each other, while the rest of the class watched the performance on video chat.
MacKay-Smith says that she and her colleagues will be using the weeks between Winter and Spring semester to come up with inventive ways to move courses and projects online.
"I know our teachers will do everything they can to make the most of this situation," she says. "We'll be putting our heads together and doing a lot of brainstorming, but everyone has confirmed that they can reach their learning outcomes."
Adapting to online learning
As students have adjusted to online learning over the past few weeks, MacKay-Smith has already seen an abundance of resilience and adaptability on display. "I am amazed and very proud of my students," she says. "They've been incredibly responsive, they're showing up for their online classes and doing as well as can be expected under these unusual circumstances."
In addition to staying committed to their craft, faculty and students are maintaining the sense of community they had on campus. Right now, they're collaborating on a music video to boost everyone's spirits, and keeping in close contact: "I've told students they can call anytime if they need to talk," MacKay-Smith says. "Just hang in there and we'll help you through."
