Drama Thinking - Part 4

In Parts 1, 2 and 3 we unpacked different Drama Thinking approaches to help open the story to drama planning.  This post will develop further drama thinking approaches. 

Contrasts and Oppositions

Stories work because there are moments of contrast – something that is strikingly different placed side by side in juxtaposition. In our drama work, we look for these contrast and moments of opposition because they generate dramatic tension 

Look within the story to find contrasts or oppositions. 

For example, look in the story for when there are sounds or silences. Look for parts of the story where there is movement or stillness.

In the journey of the ship there are moments when there is much activity and excitement. The ship is leaving harbour for the first time; the sails are being unfurled; the wind is carrying them forward on an adventure. There are many sounds to go with this part of the story.

By contrast there are also times of great boredom; perhaps the ship is becalmed and there is no wind blowing. The only sounds that can be heard are the quiet breathing of people waiting for some wind to stir and carry them forward. 

Find parts of the story that are known or unknown. Look for moments of lightness or darkness. 

In the story of the travellers to the New World for example there will be moments where the travellers are happy and light-hearted; maybe they have successfully reached a safe harbour or they have plenty of food. By contrast there will be times in their story when they are feeling dark threat or danger; maybe there is a storm or they have very little food or water. 

There are parts of the story when the travellers know what to expect. But there are times when they are confused and face the unknown. Where they don’t know what to expect.

Look within the story to find other contrasts or oppositions. 

For example, look in the story for when the action is predictable or when it is unexpected.

Look for parts of the story where there is action moves faster or when it moves slower.

Look for when the drama is near to you or far away. 

In this series of posts I have been sharing with examples of Drama Thinking – processes of unpacking stories to use in drama.

Not all stories work for Drama. Not all stories are appropriate for your students. We take great care in choosing the stories we use. We need what are called generative stories. By that I mean stories that have potential to create drama moments.

Remember, the Drama Thinking processes are a step in moving from the story to your final, planned drama lesson. The Drama Thinking Processes enable you to identify pivot points around which you can construct your drama lesson using Drama Teaching and Learning Strategies. 

Like the pieces of a jigsaw, the story, the Drama Thinking and the Strategies all fit together to provide the basis for you planning of your lesson step by step.  

Music Monday - International Women's Day

On this International Women’s Day, I have been reflecting on gender differences in the various aspects of music and teaching activity I am involved in.

As a registered teacher, I am firmly part of a majority. In 2017-18 the ratio of female to male teachers in Australian government schools was 76% to 24%. ( www.abs.gov.au)

As a registered music teacher, the ratio of females increases further to around 82% female to 18% male. 

And in the world of singing teaching and our professional association in Australia, ANATS, the female members significantly outnumber the males. (www.anats.org.au)

Yet when we look at the statistics on singing performance in Australia, males dominate the scene. In radio, for example, solo female artists tend to make up about 28% of the top 100 most-played songs. This kind of statistic is reflected across all aspects of the industry – festival line-ups, board representation, awards, grants. 

How do we redress this imbalance? Certainly, there is much being achieved by passionate young musicians of all genders, but there is still a very long road ahead.

Finally, in a post that offers no solutions, I would like to commemorate the composer generally acknowledged to be one of the first female composers – Hildegard of Bingen (12th century).

Check out her biography on www.classicfm.com

Happy International Women’s Day!

Black Swan State Theatre Company - The Cherry Orchard

 It’s wonderful to see Black Swan return to site specific productions in iconic Western Australian landmarks. The production of The Cherry Orchard at Sunset joins the fondly remembered production of The Mysteries in and around the University of Western Australia. And, the production of Tourmaline at PICA with a young Marcus Graham on a hot sweaty Festival of Perth night. 

This Cherry Orchard production starts in the main hall (remember a Troupe touring show in there). In Act 2 we move to the breezy outlook overlooking the Swan River at sunset (artfully evoked in the lighting)  After interval with Russian food from a van and iced vodka cocktails, we are at a party in the courtyard. The final act moves into the hall where the seats are now draped with dust sheets and there are a few packing boxes (with a final melancholic reveal of Firs to top the show). 

The decaying ambiance of Sunset evokes the sense of decadent decline of the family. The flaking paint and rusted roofing iron are successful in foregrounding that melancholic Chekhov ennui. In particular, the final act with the bare vast open space of the hall finally managed to give me a sense of loss that I didn’t find in the first act. 

There’s a whole thesis to be written about translating the location and time period of classic plays. At one level, all contemporary productions are transformational, reinterpreting texts for present day audiences. And we can’t forget that we are always working with Chekhov in translation – language and culture. In the first act, the overlay of Chekhov to Manimup in the 1980s seemed forced. The deliberately Kitsch fluffy bedspreads and electric fluoro outfits, the overt hints about sex, drugs and rock and roll and the music, seemed a little calculated and obviously signalled. The first act seemed cluttered. By contrast the sparseness of the final act, resonated  more. Less is more. 

Adaptations and translations are always an irresistible lure for directors. (Having inflicted on audiences a 1960’s Cyrano I can admit the fascination!). It will be interesting to see how audiences react to this adaptation. On opening night I overheard younger audience members enthusiastic about it as they left. 

One of the memorable lessons of visiting Disneyland and seeing how they stage arena outdoor productions is the skill in directing our attention in the moment to moment focus. No matter where the next action or scene was to take place, the audience was directed by action, music, sound and lighting. You knew instinctively where to look, anticipated for you by the direction. More could have been made of that skill in this production. 

The hard working cast handled the spaces well and carried off the fashion crimes of the times. They often had huge spaces to cover with entrances and exits. The hybrid language – sometimes awkwardly caught between Aussie vernacular and Chekhov – was managed though sometimes it grated. Also the improvised scenes (playing with the Casiotone while the audience joined the BBQ outdoors, for example) sit awkwardly alongside the “text”. There needs to be a fine balance between the tone of the original text and modern interpolations. 

In the end, none of the characters were truly likeable – and that bothered me. The familiar bumbling comic work of Sam Longley was sustained throughout. The “victory” speech in Act 3 by the nouveau rich Lopakhin, strongly delivered by Ben Mortley, worked hard to convey a judgement on the hopeless decadence and myopia of the landowner family. The final act farewells finally managed to draw out of me some sense of their loss.  

The use of music to establish mood, time and place was a nostalgia trip for some of the audience. There’s skill in the choices made by directors and how those choices progress characterisation and plot development. Couple of times, particularly in the party scene, the music felt like it padded the action (I know in Chekhov, we are frequently waiting for action through inaction, but sometimes, it felt like truly nothing was happening). Music does more than summon up nostalgia.   

Curiously, in Act 1, the actors were miked but not in Acts 3 and 4. I can understand why it is important to amplify the voices in the outdoor BBQ scene, but in Act 1, the reverb and distortion were off-putting.

As an aside: It was amusing  during the outdoor BBQ scene  at sunset, to see in the distance behind the action a group of kids playing – and then realising that there was something happening in their space. They scuttled off after pointing up the hill to the actors and audience. 

This production sees Black Swan back on song with staging and a strong presence in the Perth Festival. We need more reminders of this thread in the woven DNA of Black Swan.

Encore - March 20, 2021

It’s rare to have the opportunity to see both opening performance and closing night. 

Being at Sunset for Black Swan’s The Cherry Orchard on closing night gives an insight into how performances grow and mature over a season’s run.  Or maybe it could be that my ear had attuned to the vibe of the script. 

The performances are fuller and have more nuanced substance. We see and hear more - or is it just me feeling more comfortable with the construct. 

The kitchiness of 1980s memorabilia still looks tokenistic. But there is a strong recognition factor for. See some in the audience who pause to comment on the placemats. 

Sound amplification in Act 1 better. But I still wonder if it was necessary. 

This time the BBQ scene looking over the river was enlivened by the 7:00pm fireworks over Melville Water.  

There’s still the jarring moments when the wittering small talk about Casiotone whatever kicks into Chekhov. But there is still a question about the interpolated ‘Good on ta Bondy!” And the interjected ’clusterfuck’! I know that we always view Chekhov through the filter of translation, but something is lost not gained. 

The party scene in the Vodka courtyard still has padding – manic dancing to music had attack and verve from the actors but is essentially dead air space in terms of dramatic action. 

The final act in the ruined crumbling house is still powerful in draped dust sheets. 

This time I purposefully chose to see the play from differing perspectives – and it does make a difference in terms of where the action is focused (see my earlier comments about the Disney phenomenon of managing points of focus). 

Seeing a play a second time does allow for closer analysis.

The dual challenges of writing and acting are brought sharply into focus. Staying balanced on the continuum of role/character/caricature – the slippery slope between farce and tragedy – is difficult for writers and actors. How do you make the indolent toy boy more than supernumerary? How do you give even a touch of humanity to that role? And how do you make  the obviously farcical brother or neighbour less shallow and obvious? How do you take the former serf beyond simple resentment translated into revenge? This is a writing problem first. 

Did our opinion or response to Ranevskaya change? In complex characters (as Chekhov showed us) we look for the points in the action where the character’s journey changes, shifts, moves. The trajectory of Ranevskaya in this production seemed to move inevitably in one direction only. Did my emotional response to her predicament shift or change? I said after the first viewing of the production that I didn’t like any these characters and I think maybe I have worked out why.

The art of dramatic writing still goes back to the adage: show me, don;t tell me! In this version we are more often told about things – the loss of her first husband and child. Were we emotionally connected to them symbolically and emotionally? Or were we glossed past them as plot points? This is a writing issue.

It is still wonderful to see Black Swan performing at Sunset. The concept of staging a play around the site is exciting and invigorating (as much as I love going into the velvet hush of the theatre!). Let’s continue to bring excitement into our theatregoing. 

Drama Thinking - Part 3

In Part 1 we unpacked the story itself. In Part 2 we discussed using categories from everyday life and considering different perspectives – personal, social, cultural and historical. This post will develop further drama thinking approaches. 

Framing the story Shifting frames 

Linked with seeing the story from different perspectives is to deliberately think about the ways that we can frame the story for our drama exploration.

It is possible to frame the story Inside the story where we focus on taking role and acting out situation directly; or we can consider the perspective of being outside the story where we think about the story and its implications for us. 

Both perspectives are important in planning our drama. 

Consider what happens when you frame the story from these different frames or points of view. 

Inside the story you can choose to focus

• up close and personal

• stepping back from the up close and personal to see it from mid distance – medium close.

• stepping right back to see the story from far away.

In the example of the travellers on board a ship to the New World, up close and personal focuses on one person’s story or one relationship between two people in the story. Stepping to the mid distance, you might consider all the members of one group, say a family or a group of sailors who are being mistreated. Looking at the story from a distance would focus on all the travellers on the ship.

All of these examples, still have people stepping into specific roles and characters. They are inside the action of the situation and respond to the tension.

Outside the story you step out of role and consider the story from someone looking in on it.  

1. For example, the personal reflection is a subjective opportunity for you to think about the people and action of the story as an observer. You examine your thoughts and feelings about the story and the dramatic action. You explore your empathy (or antipathy) to the people and situation. For example, would I feel the same emotion and commitment to making the journey as the people in the drama?

2. Stepping further back from the story to a neutral position enables you to look at both sides of what happens in the story. You are neither for or against but considering the implications of the story with one even hand. On the one hand, the travellers on the ship’s journey travel with hope; on the other hand they are going to a New World where they hope to exploit the natural wealth and make the indigenous people slaves.

3. The third possibility of a frame outside the story is to consider it from another person’a point of view. What would the people who stay behind when the travellers leave on the ship think and feel? What would the indigenous people of the New World think and feel and do when the ship arrives on their shores?

 A reminder: You do not necessarily have a plan for teaching your drama lesson. The Drama Thinking outlined in this post is a process that hand in hand with an understanding of Drama Teaching and Learning Strategies, enables you to plan your lesson.

There are still more Drama Thinking approaches to explore. 

Drama Thinking - Part 2

In the first part I discussed drama thinking approaches to getting to know and understand the story better. This included looking at the narrative chain – the who, when, where, what happens and why of the story.  A second approach looked at the story in terms of dramatic structure – as suggested by Gustave Freytag. The first drama thinking approach suggested was brainstorming – thematic networking. This post will develop further drama thinking approaches. 

Categorisation of the story in terms of daily lives.

Rather than the free association of ideas in brainstorming or thematic networking, the starting point are experiences  commonly found in everyday lives and asking if this is a source for drama in this story. 

Some categories include:

• Work and daily rituals

• Leisure and pleasure

• Food, shelter and clothing

• Family, friends and relationships

• Education and schooling

• Beliefs and worship

• Threats and danger

• Drama and hopes.

There can be other categories too.

For example, what is the drama in the daily work and rituals of life on board a ship headed for the New World:

• sailors cleaning deck, raising sails – opportunities for movement and voice

• checking latitude and longitude to know position – using Mantle of the Expert to reinforce knowledge of the world

• storms (and sea sickness) – exploring the emotions along with movement, improvisation, etc.

• not forgetting that there are many other possibilities

A second example: are families, friendships and relationships central to the story?

What are the essential Elements of Drama and potential for tension within the families in the stories? And how do the relationships change during the story?Narrative Structure  of the story

• Who are the people on this voyage

• Family escaping religious persecution

• Captain leaving his family behind

• Cadet who is making his first voyage

• There are more possibilities

The story in perspective - seeing the story from Personal Social, Cultural Perspectives  

It is possible to think of the story from different perspectives. 

You can consider the relationships between

• the universal elements of the story (how it applies to all people and places) or you can think about the story as very specific to only some people and places.

• the broader society and the individual or family perspective

• the cultural – affecting wider ideas, habits, customs and values – or those of a specific group

• the broadly historical – what happens across time and place – and the immediate and personal history.

The sorts of questions that can be asked about the travellers on board the ship to the new world.

There is caution needed in using terms such as universal or cult. They have specific meanings and are often argued about as theoretical and practical concepts. But it is nonetheless useful to think about these aspects of a story when we are planning our drama workshops. 

This is not yet a plan for teaching your drama lesson. This is a process that hand in hand with an understanding of Drama Teaching and Learning Strategies, enables you to plan your lesson. 

There are still more Drama Thinking approaches to explore. 

Music Monday - The use of popular music in adaptations of classic plays.

On Saturday evening we attended a performance of Checkov’s The Cherry Orchard, presented by Black Swan State Theatre Company. The performance took place in one of the buildings and in the grounds of the Sunset Precinct, a heritage site in Dalkeith in Perth.

This is not a review of the play as such but some observations about the extensive use of pop music from the 1980s in this production, which was modernised and set in that decade in Manjimup, WA - the Western Australian cherry-growing district. (Ironically, the food and drinks served at interval remained distinctly Russian.)

Music was used to create context, develop a sense of character and to create a sense of place and time. The audience responded positively to the music and often seemed eager to tap, clap and even sing along. The choices of songs were recognisable, enhancing the audience’s identification and enjoyment. There were some terrible songs written in the 1980s – did we need to be reminded?!

In music theatre, music advances character and situations. Does it work the same way in a straight play? It is a fine balance. Get the balance wrong and music could be seen as just filling time. There were a few times on Saturday when I felt this was the case.

Music can also create mood and atmosphere. It was interesting in this performance, that the final act was without music. In a film there would have been underscoring throughout this scene. However, strangely, I found this final act the most satisfying of the performance.

I guess the challenge for a director is to know when to pull back.

Drama Thinking - Part 1

When you’ve done something for a long time, you overlook the processes that have become second nature or habit. I was reminded of this by a question from a student: how do you go from a story to a drama lesson based on that story? 

Underpinning this question is about the whole drama planning process. What are the intermediate steps between the source material and the detailed planning that we take into our drama workshop?

In overview to get from story to plan we use some Drama Thinking (a term I gladly borrow from Norah Morgan and Juliana Saxton(1989) linked with specific Drama Teaching and Learning Strategies.

What do I mean by Drama Thinking?

Drama Thinking are the processes where you take apart a story or drama stimulus idea to see how it can work for a drama lesson. Which pieces of the story have drama potential? Which will be useful for generating the drama learning that you hope for?

It is about how you think as a drama teacher. I am reminded of Peter Duffy’s book A Reflective Practitioner's Guide to (mis)Adventures in Drama Education – or – What Was I thinking? (2015) – (my emphasis).

What are some of the processes that I use for this drama thinking? 

Narrative Chain

First, understand the story. Look at the narrative chain in terms of  who, when, where and what happens.

In particular, look for the moments in the story that have potential dramatic action – where something happens or where someone or something changes. Consider why these changes happen, the complications faced by the people in the story and the meaning or purpose of the story. 

Narrative Structure

There is another  consideration in looking at the story: see the story in terms of a dramatic frame. Gustav Freytag, a German novelist and critic of the nineteenth century, drawing on the ideas of Aristotle, identified  an image to explain how drama worked.

Using Freytag’s  pyramid, look at the story in terms of Introduction and Exposition; inciting incident to get the action started; rising action and tension; climax; falling action; resolution and denouement  (where the  threads of the story are drawn together).. This is not a one-size-firs-all way of looking at drama, but it is useful when considering a story as having potential for use in your drama class.

Now the work of planning can begin.

Brainstorming Thematic Networking

Brainstorm all the possibilities for drama in your story.  sometimes called thematic networking, look for possibilities for drama from the story.  

For example, in a story about a shipwreck of a group of immigrants, your first idea might be to show them on board the ship as it is about to sail away from their home. 

This might link to dramatic action based on one of the travellers, saying goodbye to her mother knowing that they might never see each other again. 

And it might also suggest a scene where there is a different kind of farewell – where someone is glad to be leaving their family and cannot wait until they can escape. 

A different thread to this story might be why the journey is being made: to find new worlds or to find treasure or to conquer territory – the political reasons for the journey. The point of this brainstorming is to find as many different points of entering the drama.

In this way, we build a collection of possible moments of dramatic action. 

We have started to consider Elements of Drama such as roles, characters and relationships. The action is put in terms of situation. We can start to see the possible development of dramatic tension. 

This is a starting point. 

There are other drama thinking approaches to explore. 

This is the first of as series of posts on this topic. 

Bibliography

Duffy, P. (2015). Introduction. In P. Duffy (Ed.), A Reflective Practitioner's Guide to (mis)Adventures in Drama Education – or – What Was I thinking? (pp. 3-10). Bristol, UK: Intellect.

Morgan, N., & Saxton, J. (1989). Drama: A Mind of Many Wonders: Nelson Thornes.

Music Monday - Music’s healing power and cultural foundations

On Saturday I listened to The Science Show with Robyn Williams on ABC Radio. It was a fascinating discussion about the effect of music on the brain and on emotion  - very apt for Valentine’s Day.

The speakers were:

Psyche Loui, Associate Professor and Director MIND Lab, Northeastern University, MA, USA

Elizabeth Margulis, Professor of Music, Princeton University, NJ, USA

Daniel Levitin, Dean of Arts and Humanities at the Minerva Schools, San Francisco, USA

At Stagepage we have often referred to the benefits of music to brain development in children, in particular the wonderful work at Bigger Better Brains.

This was more of a look at music affects the brain overall.

I would urge you to have a listen to the whole show – it’s less than 30 minutes. 

Here, in points form, is what resonated most with me:

1. Musical anhedonia, an inability to experience pleasure from music, and the difference in the brains of those who have it – estimated less than 5% of humans. They are not ‘tone deaf’ or ‘worse at music’ – they simply don’t like it.

2. The rewards in the brain from experiencing music is linked to social bonding.

3. Our perception of music is strongly linked to culture and context. The famous Washington Post experiment (where a concert violinist busked in the subway and the majority of passers-by did not recognise his talent) was quoted, as was the perception of atonal music by western cultures with a tradition of tonal centres as opposed to people in say, rural China.

4. The variability in timing and amplitude that musicians use naturally, strongly affect the perception of the listener.

5. The entire brain is involved in music. Recent research seems to indicate that music uses older pathways in the brain – more resistant to transmission difficulty. 

6. Music is a unique stimulus to the brain; different parts of the brain are used for rhythm, melody, harmony, form and expression and different parts again bring them all together.

7. Point 6 may explain the effect of music in Alzheimers patients. Even after the pathways that affect speech and facial recognition have failed, the effect of familiar music can be a way to get at the brain of Alzheimers patients and help them recognise themselves.

8. The as yet underexplored area of the possible effect of music on health. For the past 2 decades there has been research but not empirical or rigorous. That is apparently changing.

9. The systemic interplay between prediction and reward when you listen to music that you enjoy.

10. Preliminary research into how music could help wounds heal faster. Music enhances mood. We have about 100 neurochemicals in our brains but scientists know only 8 of them so far. One of the famous ones – serotonin – is activated by music. Boosting levels of serotonin increases the T and K cells, the ‘James Bond’ of the immune system. Inflammation is a significant issue in wound healing and in some situations music can reduce inflammation.

I could go on, but you really need to listen for yourself and draw your own conclusions.

Like all music lovers, I have from a very young age, found certain pieces of music so achingly beautiful that they are almost too painfully beautiful. Many piano concerto slow movements fall into that category for me. I think I was drawn to this podcast because it explains some of this addiction to music.

Drama Thursday - Undecided

Undecided

Fringe Show 27 January 2021

We are so used to the message to turn off your mobile phones being intoned as we enter the theatre, it is refreshing to enter the Rehearsal Room at the State Theatre Centre, to be told Turn on your phones and login to the address on the screen. 

Undecided polls the audience with questions throughout the 60 minutes of the show and the audience “decides” what happens next (well, within the imposed limits, they decide!). 

This is a cute premise on which to stage a Fringe show. 

The audience (after a preliminary warm up about voting for mint or gum) decide whether the deliberately ambiguously named Jamie and Sam are to be played by male or female actors. And so the action unfolds. 

The plot is thin though clothed in a smear of existential angst.

Of course, there are precedents for audience deciding the outcome of a play. The Mystery of Edwin Drood uses this device – though there there are really only three possibilities and endings in that show. And given the unfinished nature of Dickens’ last work, the sense of unfinished business and different possibilities works – kind of. This had more risk to it. 

Whether this theatrical device could be sustained in this play beyond the 60 minutes playing time is worth considering. Probably  and possibly not. 

The performances are lively and energetic. Imagine the task of carrying in your head the different alternative texts for the Sam and Jamie roles. The ensemble of four are well matched. The voices are clear and the sense of style is spot on appropriate. They work hard and are animated, giving the audience a good sense of fun. 

Note to Jamie (male) watch tendency to subconscious hair flicking. You need an eagle eye and terrifying director (I am reminded of Ruth Osborne from CDC and the Youth Theatre Company in her notes about this issue. Hair flicking that carries you out of role and character is just plain distracting for audiences)

The music moves along at a fair clip and has plenty of bounce and oomph. If you have the vague sense of recognising musical memes, don’t be surprised. There is a skill in writing musical parodies. 

One of my pet hates in theatre are poor sight lines. We all know how difficult it is to find venues during Fringe (even in COVID times). But, I really don’t like it when the action disappears amongst the shoulders of the people in the seats in front of me. The problem is easy to fix – if the audience can’t see, why don’t you fix it. 

The world of drama is changing faster than we might recognise.

For example, we are used to being told to silence our phones in theatres (and not to take calls during the show). Of course, this reverential atmosphere has not always been the case. According to reports from the past, the audiences in theatres were often boisterous and disrespectful – or even paying attention to the action on the stage.

What else is changing?

Are our definitions of drama and theatre and performance changing?

Is that useful or helpful?

Fringe shows open doors to many different forms of drama and theatre and performance. 

It is healthy that there is an open-ended and inclusive approach. Yet, the old saying anything goes may not be helpful. 

Innovation drives practice. 

What are the innovations in drama practice that we should be paying attention to?

How is technology changing our understanding of drama and theatre?

It is not just the current pandemic that is causing re-thinking of our perceptions of drama and theatre. 

There are changed expectations about the type of performance, the role of cause and effect narratives, relationships between audience and actors.The title of the Fringe show was Undecided and this is perhaps indicative of a need to rethink our previously held assumptions. 

About this event

We've all been there: you're watching a musical and it's not going the way you want. Maybe a character is annoying you, or a plot line seems unnecessary. Well, now the power is in your hands! UNDECIDED is a choose-your-own-adventure musical where the audience vote on which direction the story takes next!

A live pianist and eager cast will be faced with the challenge of creating a totally different experience every night, starting with a big decision; will the first character - Jaime - be played by a woman or a man? Could this be the ultimate in audience satisfaction? The choice (and the blame) is yours!

UNDECIDED is a new musical adventure written and directed by John McPherson (Lawyers and Other Communicable Diseases, Greenwicks!) and co-written by James Palm (Threshold).

Music Monday - Masked Music Teaching

In Western Australia, teachers and students returned to school today after a snap lockdown of the Perth and South-West for the week before – the week which should have been the first week of term. 

For this past week, Western Australians have been very diligent about mask wearing. After 10 months of not needing to wear masks, it was almost as if we as a community thought, “Right, let’s put these masks on and make sure we don’t have further community spread”. And this was based on one case of Covid-19. 

The strategy warranted an article in the New York Times last week.

At the end of the week, after no further cases emerging, the South-West region had all restrictions lifted and the Perth region had lockdown lifted, but with some restrictions – masks to be worn in all public places, 4 square metres distancing between people in any venue and the maintenance of 1.5 metres between people elsewhere.

And so, I returned to my secondary school singing teacher position today.

Music teachers of wind and voice had been given permission to have their students out of masks during lessons. I found that a challenge, given the ongoing research into the aerosol transmission of Covid-19 and the heightened level of aerosol involved in singing. I elected for my students to remain masked.

Each lesson started with an acknowledgement that our masked situation was a good reminder of what life has been like for most of the rest of the world for nearly a year. The students got it. I got it. Masks are incredibly annoying.

Because it was week one, I was able to avoid a certain amount of singing by talking through the course outlines and assessment procedures. I recorded backing tracks on piano for those students who needed it. We sang some muffled scales through our masks. One group tackled their first set song. The lessons were not significantly different from what I would usually do in week one.

One aspect of mask wearing that I hadn’t thought of is how little you see of a person’s features in a mask. I met a new class of year 8 students and really would not recognise them again next week – masked or unmasked.

It is highly likely that we will all remove our masks in WA at 12.01am on Sunday the 14th February. If so we remain incredibly fortunate and should not forget it.

But what if we had to do many weeks of music teaching in masks? Class music is fine. Many instruments are fine. I guess I’m asking my voice and wind instrument colleagues from elsewhere about strategies they are using. What do you do?