COVID TRANSITION TO AN ONLINE STORY
W
e began 2020 like any other year with workshops starting up at the Ozanam Learning Centre Woolloomooloo. As the world shut down with the advent of COVID 19, Milk Crate Theatre also needed to do a digital pivot.
LIVE STREAMING TUESDAYS Every Tuesday, AD Margot Politis went live on Facebook and Instagram to maintain an online presence or face of Milk Crate for people feeling overwhelmed or alone. Every week we set a creative task that participants could complete during the week and shared the following week's outcomes. The sessions also included chats and readings from inspirational artists and thought leaders.
DEVISING THEATRE ONLINE Workshops The workshop series planned for the Ozanam Learning Centre was pivoted into an online format, so Margot and Lucy set about filming a video class every week that was followed up by a zoom session the week after. These video workshops were also typed up with images and mailed out to people who couldn't join us on zoom, and people completed some exercises over the phone.
ONLINE RESOURCES Margot created a series of videos with breathing exercises, warmth-ups, and stretches for people to do at home. We also typed these up with images and mailed them to people in our community who didn't have internet access.
Image Credit Right: OLC workshop 2019. Photo by Kay Armstrong.
16
Milk Crate Theatre
After ten weeks of looking at narrative arcs, creating characters, and exploring their relationships, we decided to spend another ten weeks developing this story into a script's beginnings. We presented our work-in-progress to a small invited audience via zoom, and the response was so positive that we have now put plans in place to develop Dust Storm into a full script for the eventual presentation. A wonderful surprise to materialise from a very confusing and challenging year.
