Longtime instructors were hesitant about how to translate the format — especially the musical aspect — but there was no question about wanting to maintain the connection with the students. “They just knew they wanted to make it happen no matter what,” said Lily Nguyen, Director of the Performing Arts Institute and Seniors Reaching Out.

1. Devised and Musical Theatre

Bruce Bierman has taught devised and musical theater and dance at Stagebridge for many years. He often employs Viewpoints, a devised theater technique. However, he was uncertain as how to how he might use this technique on Zoom.

“I wanted to just throw out the computer the first day,” said Bruce. “We go into the arts to connect with people.” After getting his bearings, he decided to lean in and embrace the platform as a cinematic form in his theater and dance classes.

“All of a sudden we had a vocabulary to share. We practiced close-ups, medium shots, long shots,” said Bruce. “It looks so wonderful in Zoom, all these different perspectives and viewpoints. Everyone found a space in their homes and adjusted their screens so their bodies can be seen. People were moving through their homes in an improvised way, pushing through space.”

For the musical theater class, there were many more challenges. In order to shift to prioritize individual skill-building Stagebridge cut the class from 24 students to 10. Group choreography or group singing can be challenging with music and timing on Zoom, so participants worked on solo songs and the musical director recorded the music and emailed it to them as MP3 files. That way, when they performed, the music would come from their source and avoid the lag time on Zoom.

“Normally in person you don’t get to focus on their faces and you don’t connect in such an intimate way,” a participant said.

2. Dance and Movement

For his online dance class, Bruce paired up dancers in their own “rooms,” where they were assigned to create a movement piece. The pairs returned to the main meeting and performed the duet in the moment. In another exercise, Bruce asked them what they’re craving now during this time of social distancing. Some of the answers were to travel or to see the ocean. He asked them to create gestures and a dance around that craving. Bruce conducted as they did their movements, finding ways to connect with each other.

“They are finding ways to push through their space and become more spacious and expansive, even as sometimes it feels like the walls are closing in around us,” said Bruce.

One student said that even though they weren’t all in the same space, the music helped them connect with everyone else in the meeting. “That was heart-warming to hear that they could still feel that connection even though they aren’t in same physical space,” Bruce added.

Other instructors were pleasantly surprised by the possibilities of remote instruction. “For our tap class, the instructor was hesitant to commit at first because ethically, he wasn’t sure he could give students the correct feedback in terms of posture and the weight they were putting on their feet, etc.,” said Lily. “He knew they could go over moves they had already learned, but was hesitant about teaching something new online.”

That instructor expected to have to send students a video beforehand of steps they were learning, with the songs attached. However, he discovered he could use a feature on Zoom to share computer sound, and found that the sound came through much clearer and was less distracting with taps and vocal instruction over it.

At Stagebridge’s urging, most instructors shortened their classes for this digital format, from two hours to an hour and a half tops because as Bruce said, “Zoom burnout is a real thing.”

To remedy this, storytelling instructor, Joel Ben Izzy, introduced a tool called, “20/20/20” to both his two hour classes, which he learned from his neighbor who practices meditation from the Center for Mindful Self-Compassion. Every 20 minutes, participants are instructed to take a quick break, find something beautiful to look at 20 feet away and focus on that for 20 seconds. This gives everyone’s eyes a break from the screen. This tool is also cohesive with what the class is, which is everyone sharing their personal stories.

“Taking those 20 seconds after hearing something beautiful is a nice thing to do, and is healthy for them,” said Lily.

Stagebridge is now halfway through their online programs and have retained about 65% of their usual in-person registration. “Students felt comfortable to say, ‘This doesn’t work for me, can we figure out a better way to do this?'” said Julius. “In this way, we are having the students be the catalysts for re-framing classes in this context.”

Now that this model is working well, Julius sees some real possibilities for continuing classes online, and possibly stretching Stagebridge’s reach beyond the San Francisco Bay Area. “Much of our history is to make sure we have a community of engaged and talented artists. Now we can extend that reach because the sky’s the limit for connection through the digital landscape,” he said. “The tech isn’t new to the world, just new to this particular community. It’s just a culture shift. Our whole focus in education is always trying one more step to be better. Moving to digital — this is simply our next step.”