Meet Rene BeVier Dill. She is a mom of three and a middle school theater teacher in Colorado who is making the most of teaching theater online. Before teaching middle school, Rene was a Teaching Artist in NYC and a high school theater teacher in Colorado with over 17 years of experience. When our nation’s teachers had to turn on a dime and start teaching virtually, Rene wrote her whole spring e-learning curriculum around the Stage Partners play THE DAY THE INTERNET DIED using our PDF Script Pack. Not only were we flattered, we wanted to know how she did it!

Here, Rene shares some of her Distance Learning tricks and a couple of her wonderful lessons with Education Director, Maria

We’re going back to school… or maybe we’re not going back in-person, it’s all online… or maybe we’re in school but we are social distancing…

This is not an easy time to plan if you are a theater teacher. As you begin to develop your plans for in-school, home-school and everything in between, Stage Partners wants to be a resource to you. Using a play from our catalogue as a starting point and developing lessons around it can help keep the love of theater alive until we can all congregate for a live performance once again.

A few months ago, the world was upended. I remember the day after

If you had asked me 2 months ago if I thought directing a live play on video conferencing platforms Zoom was a good idea, I would have laughed and run the other way. But after some practice, you can actually mimic the rehearsal process, “live edit” your cast into orderly scenes, and ultimately present a clear and compelling story to your audience.

It’s also pretty easy and fun.

I highly doubt the computer programmers were thinking about how theater people might use apps like Zoom or FaceTime

How can theater educators thrive in the new digital classroom we all— teachers, kids, parents, the world— suddenly find ourselves in?

Because no matter how long Skype, Zoom, Newrow, LearnCube, or any of the other platforms have been active, the transition to online learning has been very sudden, precipitated by the COVID-19 crisis. Whatever your age— whether you’re a kid or adult, single citizen or worried parent— you can’t escape the idea whose time has