Zooming off script and into the future

05.01.2020

A museum comes into possession of a knight who has been trapped in a block of ice for 700 years. A mad scientist thaws out the specimen, who becomes an unwitting subject of two competing experiments.

While the museum team works to preserve the knight’s authentic medieval sensibilities, the scientist has a different plan: to study the effects of deep freeze on the knight's fitness for space travel. Tensions come to a head as the knight's captors go to increasing lengths to meet their own objectives, only to be foiled by a mischievous group of teenagers, giving way to a journey of epic discoveries for the knight-turned-time/space traveler. 

These are the broad strokes of an original play, Starry Knight, conceived by students in Young Performers Theatre’s Presenting…the show! class. Were it not for the coronavirus pandemic, they’d be convening and brainstorming their characters on Tuesday afternoons at YPT’s space at Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture. But staying apart physically has not dampened their creativity nor their enthusiasm for collective improvisation. The show, after all, must go on…online, via Zoom. 

YPT Theatre in Education Director Phillip Laurent, like many teachers, didn’t know what to expect when he began preparing to make the transition to Zoom classes. Theatre is, by definition, a physical art form. How would the kids respond when prompted to collaborate on a show remotely? 

“Within first five minutes,” he says, “it became clear that the kids were happy to see each other.”

He’s been able to engage the kids with games incorporating elements of improvisation, charades and show and tell. They’re also diving into creating their own characters and stories. 

“I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how well it’s going and how quickly the time passes,” says Phillip, who is teaching two Presenting…the show! classes and one class for younger kids, Creative Drama.  

His Creative Drama class has been imagining its own unique take on The Wizard of Oz. They began by discussing how the characters Dorothy encounters are all seeking something they’ve lost, how Dorothy is trying to find her way home, and what makes Oz different from the real world. 

Then came the fun part: dreaming up characters they wanted to bring to life and the adventures they’d have together. Phillip challenged them to consider how their characters would feel if they lost something important to them. One student imagined a tin horse that relies on a bird to maintain mobility and move her hooves. When the bird has babies and can no longer be there for the horse, the horse has to find a new friend. Even over Zoom, says Phillip, the richness of relationships between characters and the emotional reactions they have to the experience of loss, come through in ways that are “touching, beautiful.” 

Most of YPT’s class and camp offerings are built around a playwriting workshop model, with the kids developing their own characters and instructors weaving them into a script. (For classes with students in kindergarten through 2nd grade, there’s less of an emphasis on following a written script.) Students learn about story structure and, with guidance from the instructor, figure out how their characters cross paths and what they say to one another. The process lends itself to the type of online collaboration that Zoom enables. 

For YPT Executive/Artistic Director Stephanie Holmes, adapting YPT’s programming is key to staying relevant and maintaining a sense of community while Covid-19 safety considerations preclude in-person classes and the staging of live performances. When something goes wrong on stage, she notes, rather than freeze, seasoned players extemporize. 

“We want to stay connected and deliver on what people are expecting, but our definition of how we deliver is changing,” she says, because of the pandemic. “The best we can offer is the ability to morph into whatever the world needs from us.” Now more than ever, she adds, kids need an imaginative escape from the confines of their homes.

Pivoting to online classes is part of the response, but that by itself is not sufficient. Whether it’s figuring out how to incorporate social distancing into live class and performance settings, or offering hybrid online and in-person classes, presenting radio-style dramas (in which Zoom serves as a recording “studio” for the actors) or finding new venues to reach young audiences, YPT won’t hesitate to discard the existing playbook and do whatever it takes to deliver on its mission of making theatre arts accessible to Bay Area children. 

“To me,” says Stephanie, “the thing that defines YPT is the sense of community, and that is something Covid can’t bring down.” — Graham Button