GFA Theater Department Goes Online
By Will San Jose '22 and Nicole Taylor '22
This school year, the GFA Performing Arts Department has changed the way its classes and performances are held to an online format due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It’s a new world,” Director of Theatre Programs Stephen Stout said. “This is a world we didn’t know a year ago. At all.”
Stout is teaching all of his classes from home this year. Like all of GFA’s remote teachers, Stout uses Zoom to communicate with his classes of in-person students.
The fall play, Diana of Dobson’s, by Cecily Hamilton, is also happening over Zoom this year, so instead of performing on a stage, the actors will be performing their lines in a live Zoom meeting. Each performer is going to have their own virtual background in place of a set. The usual fall musical has been moved to the spring with hopes for a better rehearsal method in the future.
“We are all in this together; this is a living, breathing example of that right now,” Stout said. “I like change. I like the challenge of it.”
Stout also expanded on some specific difficulties of the online format.
“Being in the physical space is so important,” Stout said. “[My classroom is] my playground. That’s where I get to have students really experiment and take creative risk in real time in a safe place.”
Stout’s schedule for the next rotation includes teaching two inquiries in addition to his classes and directing the three performances of the fall play from Nov. 19–21.
Amidst the changes to his department, Stout has thought about what such dramatic shifts would bring to the school as a whole.
“It’s a time of reminding ourselves to be kind to one another in so many different ways,” he said. “I’d like to see some of that end up in every program, including, of course, the performing arts.”