Re-imagining In-Person School Residency Humanities Programming for Digital Deployment in the New Covid-19 Paradigm

FAIN: HC-274958-20

Great Lakes Theater Festival, Inc. (Cleveland, OH 44115-2108)
Lisa Ortenzi (Project Director: May 2020 to October 2021)

Retention of four staff members and partial support for up to six teachers to deliver humanities programming focused on classic literature at the Great Lakes Theater in Cleveland, Ohio.

The theater proposes to develop, expand and refine its interactive, video/digital School Residency Program pilot initiative for the coming school year – to transcend the social distancing challenges presented by COVID-19 – delivering humanities programming that focuses on classic literature, which is traditionally conducted in-person, via the internet instead. To prepare for several potential pandemic-related school schedule/closure scenarios, the theater plans to develop/produce/deploy several expanded video modules (multi-day curriculum arcs) as well as explore how to retool the theater’s participatory residency format for a potential live interactive video platform such as Zoom. Like each live residency session, each digital residency unit will combine presentation of background information on plays and playwrights with performance and analysis of selected scenes from classical plays, reinforcing vocabulary and other language arts skills.