AS theatres around the country languish, emptied of patrons, some arts businesses are getting up to speed very quickly. 

One such is Perform Australia, formerly the Canberra Academy of Dramatic Art, whose name was changed not long ago to acknowledge its merger with Queensland’s Australian School of Performing Arts, Film and Television, Drama Works Academy of Performing Arts in Brisbane and Palm Tree Studios on the Central Coast of NSW. 

CEO and principal, Elizabeth Avery Scott, contacted “CityNews” last week to tell us of a new project called ”ActLive TV”, a suite of online drama classes for children aged four to 17.

It’s been a sharp learning curve. Over the few weeks, she and husband James, who heads the acting courses, acquainted themselves with the necessary technology then hastily developed new programs to suit the new learning environment, quickly setting up holiday programs for Easter and Term 2 programs.

It helps that Elizabeth is a seasoned playwright, so writing fun courses was second nature to her.

“When the crisis first hit, we realised we had to move very quickly,” she tells us.

“The pandemic had led to the closing of borders and we knew that would affect school. We have activities in Brisbane and also in regional NSW, but we decided to face it.”

Teaching in isolation posed a challenge but the good thing, she quickly noticed, was that in doing it, she realised borders were not so important for teachers – “online, you can teach anywhere”.

“In a virtual class you can do many things that you can do in a face-to-face class,” she explains.

“Drama games, for instance, are a basic part of all acting classes and you can also read and rehearse scenes… and the technology allows you to record what you’ve done on a screen.”

Headquartered in Kembla Street, Fyshwick, the drama school has a strong focus on teaching young people learning skills to enter the theatrical professions, whether on stage or screen, serving more than 700 pupils under the go-ahead slogan, “Launching passion-driven actors”.

One exciting discovery was the potential to work up a course in radio plays for Term 2, where kids confined at home will be asked to source found objects to create the sound effects and then work from a script to create characters, develop vocal skills and use voice to create characters in a radio play.

Elizabeth describes a typical class: “We start with an acting warmup and a voice warmup, then move into games and acting exercises, then some directing will begin and we’ll get feedback.”

Perform Australia is using the Zoom platform, but they’re still investigating live-streaming for the time when they want to perform. The quality of the sound is not perfect and pupils can’t sing in time together, so the popular musical theatre programs will have to be delayed.

“One challenge being posed is that some students have issues with internet connections,” Elizabeth says. 

“It’s not perfect, but we believe this technology is going to evolve quickly.”

She and James have lost some tutors because of the pressure the course puts on teachers’ private lives, but they plan to have about six tutors working continually.

Perform Australia’s accredited courses, diplomas and certificates are also moving online. Doing a stage show is normally a big part of their assessment, so for the next term they’ll rearrange the courses so students can choose other units and delay those performances until later in the four-term year.

But Elizabeth has discovered that courses in foundational skills for stage or screen and the individual monologues previously showcased in live nights of monologues can still run virtually – “it’s a matter of adaptation”.

“One thing pupils can do online is to look at former productions and theatre history courses that will adapt well to online discussion, also script analysis and playwriting which involve discussion.”

Perform Australia has set up a separate website at actlive.tv to keep the new classes separate from face-to-face classes and steer young people to the children’s programs.

“CityNews” took a quick look at some of the April 2020 online classes.

In “Animal Adventures – Drama In The Jungle”, a 45-minute drama class with a jungle theme for ages four to five, the idea is to explore the animal world to find out who’s in charge, who’s sneaky and who’s able to escape, in effect teaching foundational acting skills like how to create characters and how to apply physical character traits to communicate the characters’ personalities.

For kids aged 13 to 17, there’s one themed “The End of the World As We Know It”, another one on Shakespearean acting and another one on movie monologues.

Right now it seems to be emerging, just as Elizabeth says, that “online, you can teach anywhere.”

Perform Australia’s online classes can be accessed at actlive.tv All other inquiries to 1300 908905.