We Teach Drama: Think Like A Sound Designer

We Teach Drama is a new initiative, a project set up by Drama teacher Lucy Bellingham and launched in 2021, to create and deliver free resources and CPD to inspire teachers and practitioners. Their first CPD session was a free webinar on Saturday 16 January with theatre sound designer Eva Collins Alonso, hosted on Zoom by Bellingham and attended, for an hour, by teachers all over the UK and as far afield as Hong Kong, Dubai and Kuala Lumpur.

The session was the first in a series of four, running on weekends through to 6 February – the others focussing on set, costume and lighting design respectively. It was easy (and free) to sign up on the website, and a week before the session took place I was sent my first countdown email, inviting me to join a private Facebook group for attendees of the session. This is a great idea: such an easy way to create a forum in which teachers can share their own ideas, answer each others’ queries, and post resources. Lucy and Eva themselves are both members of the group, and the longevity of this setup guarantees continued benefit for attendees long beyond the one-hour webinar.

A few days before the session, a second email went out to attendees containing a comprehensive resource pack of PDFs and links, covering aspects of the history of sound in theatre as well as practical information.

The webinar itself got off to a slightly rocky start, with some Zoom slide-sharing teething troubles which were no doubt a feature of this being the first one, and are sure to have been resolved in time for future sessions. After 10 minutes we were passed over to our star turn, who began by talking through a short piece of script to explain how she picks out individual words which stand out and suggest the possibility for sound cues. After talking through these ideas and how the collaboration with a theatre director works in this task, she moved to a demonstration of using QLab. This was an excellent on-screen walk-through, culminating in a fantastic demonstration of how a piece of text can be brought to life, incorporating free online sound effects and home-made foley. A programme which might be quite daunting for the uninitiated was made extremely comprehensible and attendees were enthusing in the ‘chat’ function afterwards about how much their students would love this process. In the last 10 minutes there was a brief Q&A, curated by Bellingham, and promise of the answer to further questions in the Facebook group.

On leaving the Zoom call, we were presented with a survey question, asking us to make a ‘pledge’ to implement something we'd learnt in the coming weeks – a nice touch to emphasise the practical take-home value of the session. After the event, a recording of the full session is available for a limited time, and a certificate of attendance sent too, as evidence for CPD. I would heartily recommend attending these webinars as more become available.

Eva Collins Alonso will be running a Foley Sound Webinar for teachers on Saturday 27 February.

Follow @WeTeachDrama and search #ThinkLikeADesigner on Twitter to join the conversation.

www.weteachdrama.com