How To Perform A Play On Zoom

Shyna is an austin-based writer. She is a pupil at the University of Texas at Austin.

Beyond the world, millions of people have had to conform their lives and piece of work in response to the pandemic.

As actors, performers, and creative producers, we likewise have to arrange to the changing world.

Zoom has become the most popular platform for communication and connection to cope with social distancing mandates.

And it's a great option for us to continue to do what we love.

This calendar month, I participated in a virtual production of A Midsummer Nighttime's Dream.

In this article, I'll share the technical tips I learned from my directors and the insights I gained from my experience.

Helpful Zoom Features

Schedule Recurring Meetings

Use Zoom's built-in scheduling part to plan ahead for rehearsals and meetings.

These recurring meetings can be scheduled in daily, weekly, or monthly intervals.

Each of these meetings will accept identical start times, end times, meeting IDs, and settings.

Setting-upward these meetings is a great mode to establish a routine for all participants.

To host a meeting longer than 40 minutes, the host must upgrade to a paid Zoom account. This is non required for participants, who tin join extended sessions for free.

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To schedule a recurring coming together, click the 'Schedule' button on the Zoom homepage. Then, simply cheque the 'Recurring Meeting' box (highlighted yellow in the moving-picture show to a higher place) when y'all schedule your first meeting.

Later scheduling your meetings, Zoom will give yous a Coming together ID that participants can use to bring together every meeting.

Y'all tin can also ship a link via email or text that participants can use to enter meetings.

Gallery View & Hide Non-video Participants

Start rehearsals by instructing all participants to turn on gallery view. From this brandish, actors can enable audio and video to enter "on stage" and disable audio and video to exit.

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BUT, to brand these entrances and exits work, the host must make participants with disabled videos invisible.

This can exist washed using the 'Hibernate Non-video Participants' feature (highlighted below). This feature will hibernate contour pictures and names of participants who have turned off their videos. But performers with enabled videos will be visible on-screen.

Find this feature by clicking the settings icon in the top right-paw corner of the home page. A 'Settings' pop-upwards should appear. Click 'Video' on the sidebar menu. Finally, cheque the box adjacent to 'Hide not-video participants'.

The dreaded Mute/Unmute Button

This may seem extremely simple, but the trickiest aspect of my Zoom experience has been remembering to unmute myself before speaking.

When you enter a scene, you take to call up that at that place are two buttons that enable your remote performance.

Y'all must turn on your video AND unmute yourself. Then, the stage is yours.

Adjust Position of Video Displays

This is a hidden Zoom feature that can be invaluable for acting and reacting to other actors through Zoom.

Yous can customize video layout by having participants enter the scene in a sure order. The first thespian to plow on their camera will be in box one, the second thespian in the second box, and so on.

The boxes are filled, starting time, from left to right, and, secondly, from the top of the screen to the bottom. Here is an example in which the numbers represent the club of participant entrance:

Using this technique enables performers to understand how the audience sees them.

Merely, this arrangement will be skewed for the participants themselves. The people coordinating the brandish arrangement must take their video stopped, so they tin run into what the audience will see.

You lot tin can take reward of this feature by planning the order of entry for each participant in a given scene.

Alternatively, coordinators and directors who are offscreen tin transport letters to actors during rehearsals and performances to explicate their position on-screen.

With the knowledge of their relative positions, actors can enhance the functioning past facing each other, reacting towards other characters, and "handing-off" objects to 1 another.

Zoom Breakout Rooms

Zoom breakout rooms can be especially useful for practicing several different pieces of the play at the same time.

For instance, during rehearsals for my performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream, we had several breakout sessions. The outset breakout room would host the actors playing Hippolyta, Thesus, and Egeus; the second would host Hermia, Helena, Demetrius, and Lysander; the third would host the rude mechanicals and so on.

To use this feature, the meeting host must click the 'Breakout Rooms' push on the bill of fare bar at the lesser of their screen.

After clicking this button, a window titled 'Create Breakout Rooms' (pictured beneath) volition open.

Select 'Manually' if y'all want to assign certain participants to certain rooms. This is a great choice if you want each room to work on a particular part of the play.

Select 'Automatically' if you desire Zoom to evenly assign participants to the rooms y'all create. This option is great for generalized group piece of work.

Change Display Names

To help the audience and other performers follow the performance on this new platform, you can replace the actor's names in the Zoom display boxes with the names of their characters.

To change your display name, click the push labeled 'Participants' on the toolbar at the bottom of your screen. Once 'Participants' is clicked, a list of meeting participants will announced on the right-hand side of your screen.

Find your name on this list of participants, and hover over information technology with your cursor. To the right of your proper noun, you will find two buttons labeled 'Mute' and 'Rename'.

NOTE: There may exist a 'More' push button in place of the 'Rename' push button. If y'all see the 'More' push on your display, click it. 'Rename' will appear as an option nether 'More'.

Click the 'Rename' button. A 'Rename' window (like the one pictured below) volition appear.

Use the text box under 'Enter a new screen proper noun:' to enter the name of your character.

You lot tin alter this name throughout your meetings and performances.

Hide Cocky-View

Many actors (myself included) are opposed to performing in mirrors. These individuals may be put off by the fact that they can see themselves performing over Zoom.

The "Hibernate Cocky View" feature is an easy fix for this. This feature volition prevent a given participant from seeing themselves while allowing other participants and viewers to proceed seeing them.

If you apply this feature, make sure you have a expert understanding of your camera view and performance infinite. You desire to make sure you don't motion out of camera view.

Acting Through Zoom

Stand (if you can)

Continuing up during your zoom performance can be very helpful for participants who are spatially and technologically capable.

Continuing will allow you to feel the lines in your body. Even if your viewers can merely come across the tiptop half of your torso, using your whole body to perform will help bring you into the moment you lot are portraying.

Go Comfy

Brand certain to include introductions and warm-ups in rehearsals. These are especially important in this new venue.

This medium will be new to many performers. It'due south important to brand this a comfortable space for exploration and expression.

Emphasize Connection

It's easy to feel similar you lot're delivering a series of monologues while performing on this platform.

Think to really connect with other performers every bit your characters interact. Share the moments you accept on-screen together. Go along your eyes and ears open to what other characters are doing, and act accordingly.

Use Every Pixel of that Box

If nothing happens in your Zoom boxes, the audience will get bored. Grab the audience'due south attention and brand the most of this platform with creative utilize of your box.

Here are a few ideas:

Set Your Stage

Encourage actors to use annihilation they have bachelor to set a scene for their characters.

For our production of Midsummer Night's Dream, we used fairy lights, plastic plants, real plants, flashlights, toy dogs, table cloths, backdrops, baskets, blankets, and a compound bow to set our scenes.

You can also utilize digital features on Zoom to help create a setting. For ane, Zoom allows y'all to set virtual backgrounds. Zoom provides five pre-downloaded groundwork images and allows users to download images and videos to use as background. Click Hither to get detailed instructions on using Zoom virtual backgrounds.

Other virtual applications, similar Snap Camera, allow you lot to overlay virtual filters and stickers on your video display. This application allows users to bring the effects of the Snapchat telephone app to their computers. Here is a video on how to utilize the Snap Camera app on Zoom:

I recommend minimal employ of Zoom virtual backgrounds and filters. They are fun to play effectually with, but they can distract from the performance. For our show, we played with the Snap camera app and used it as inspiration for our props and costumes.

For example, the actors playing fairies liked the Snap Camera confetti filter, and so they threw real confetti in the concluding scene of the play.

Dress Your Character

Encourage actors to put together costumes that fit their characters.

These costumes should distinguish individual characters, but likewise be similar enough to anchor all characters in the aforementioned story earth.

For our Midsummer performance, nosotros presented the globe of Athenian royalty and fairy magic in modernistic stylings because that is what we had on mitt.

It worked out beautifully. The royals were majestic. The fairies were colorful. And the rude mechanicals were pitiful…as they should accept been!

Understand and Use Your Scale

Changes in the number of boxes on-screen take a dramatic effect on Zoom. For example, the visual of 15 participants on-screen is very dissimilar from the visual of ii participants on-screen.

If fewer boxes are displayed on the screen, actors will accept increased attention from the viewer, and smaller details of their display will exist easier to see. This gives actors freedom to dorsum abroad from their cameras and show more of their bodies and backdrops.

If several boxes are displayed on the screen, actors should become closer to their cameras and focus more on reacting to others present in the scene.

Magic Hand-offs

In one case y'all figure out how to arrange the society of your participant Zoom boxes (this is covered in the department to a higher place "Arrange Position of Video Displays"), you can have characters pass objects to each other betwixt boxes.

To prepare for this stunt, tell participating actors where they are relative to each other, and make certain they pass objects that are identical or relatively similar to each other.

To perform this stunt, starting time past having 'Actor A' hold their object inside photographic camera view, while 'Thespian B' keeps their object outside of photographic camera view. 'Actor A' should pass the object in the general management 'Actor B'. As the object vanishes from the camera view of 'Role player A,' 'Role player B' should pull their object into camera view from the general direction of 'Actor A'.

The audience really gets a kick out of this i!

Pre-recording Sound

Information technology tin can be difficult to coordinate collective sounds between individual performers over zoom. Using pre-recorded sound from phones or computers is one way to overcome this obstruction.

The recording tin can be done past the performers and used to simplify aspects of the performance. For example, earlier our Midsummer performance, we recorded a guitar strum that was played when characters woke upwardly during a scene (this happens a lot in Midsummer).

You lot can likewise use pre-recorded audio to create effects that performers cannot practice organically. During our performance, nosotros used cricket sounds that we found online to enhance a character'southward bad joke.

The audio quality is best if the recording is played by the last person who spoke on Zoom.

Ane-on-1 Meetings

Directors tin can yet take fourth dimension to meet individually with actors.

To prepare for our performance, directors organized individual Zoom meetings exterior of rehearsals to answer questions, hash out language, and help actors define characters.

Performing Through Zoom

Of course, the terminate goal of this process is to perform for an audience.

Reach your audience past pairing the power of Zoom with social and streaming platforms.

Facebook and YouTube Live

Zoom allows you to stream meetings and webinars to Facebook and YouTube live during the performance.

Viewers can annotate on the performance in real-fourth dimension on both platforms.

Live streaming will cease either when the meeting ends or when the Zoom host selects the stop streaming push.

A recording of the performance will exist saved on your Facebook folio or YouTube channel subsequently the live performance is finished.

Get an in-depth caption of how to stream your Zoom performance on Facebook Live here. For a detailed explanation of how to stream your Zoom performance on YouTube Live click here.

Zoom Webinar

If you lot want every aspect of the performance to stay on one platform, you can use Zoom Video Webinar. This plan allows you to invite view-only attendees to the performance.

The plan distinguishes between participants and attendees. Participants can plough on their videos, unmute themselves, and communicate amid themselves without alerting attendees. The view-only brake for attendees prevents them from injecting themselves into the performance.

Unlike Facebook and YouTube streaming, the Zoom Webinar audience (also known as the attendees) cannot comment during the functioning. Depending on your goals, this could be a positive or a negative. In my feel, having the audience collaborate in this new fashion (that isn't possible during traditional live performances) makes the evidence even more than fun and engaging.

Detect more than information on Zoom's Webinar platform here.

Yous tin also use a combination of these strategies. For example, you can host your performance on Zoom Webinar and stream the webinar on Facebook and YouTube at the same time.

Go Excited!

Although the earth is beginning to open up again, this new medium has a lot of potential for bringing together performers from all over to create common experiences.

Last year, I started using programs like Zoom before they became a necessity. That experience allowed me to appreciate their potential for creative operation.

I was able to interact with actors from three different continents. I performed Romeo and Juliet with performers in France, Julius Caesar with performers in China, and Equally Y'all Like It with performers in Ecuador.

Technology isn't a barrier to creativity. It's an additional outlet. Utilise this time to create similar y'all never have before.

Tell me about the Zoom performance you want to produce in the annotate department below.

Stay Tuned – Shyna Antwi