Drama Teachers: How do you run an effective Q and A session?

Episode 193: Drama Teachers: How do you run an effective Q and A session? In the 21st century, the world is at our fingertips. That means your students can interact with the playwright of their next play through Skype, do a Google Hangout with a professional actor, or talk to a set designer on Facebook Live. But how do you run a question and answer session that’s valuable for your students and gets the most out of your guest?  Listen in for some insight and for a Q and A in action! Show Notes Hoodie Humbug High Deck the Stage Episode Transcript Welcome to the Drama Teacher Podcast brought to you by Theatrefolk – the Drama Teacher Resource Company. I’m Lindsay Price. Hello! I hope you're well. Thanks for listening! This is Episode 193 and you can find any links to this episode in the show notes which are at Theatrefolk.com/episode193. Today, we’re talking about Q&A. Ah, I’m a rhymer! We all know what that means – questions and answers – Q&A. We are living in an age of communication, an age of technology, and age where your students can actually talk to the playwright of their next play – you know, so long as it’s not Shakespeare or some other dead playwright, you know – although wouldn’t that be awesome? Can you imagine, you can have your time machine and you could talk to Shakespeare? I digress. But you could talk to the playwright of your next play through Skype. You could do a Google Hangout with a professional actor. You could talk to a set designer on Facebook Live. It is all possible and it’s something that I do quite a lot of. I do a lot of Skype Q&As – virtual Q&As with students who are putting up one of my plays. Sometimes, I talk to student directors; sometimes, I talk to after-school programs; sometimes, it’s classes. I’ve talked to high schools, I’ve talked to middle schools. On paper, I think that these events are kind of fabulous. I would do them and will do them for anyone doing one of my plays. I love hearing what students think. I love hearing what they think about the characters, about what’s happening. I have one play called “Look Me in the Eye” and students always want to know how to pronounce the names in the play. It takes place in the future so the names are a little bit off-kilter and they want to know if they’ve got the background right for the names and how they’re pronounced and if they’re on the right track. I can answer those questions. I can help their process. But, sometimes, what can happen is I talk to a teacher ahead of time and the teacher talks about how excited the students are to talk to me and how they want to talk to me and they have all kinds of questions and they can’t wait and the day comes and the Skype is all set up and I’m there and they’re there and there’s maybe one or two questions and then silence. I get it. I know, I know, it’s weird. It’s weird to do this online. It’s weird to do it over the computer instead of in person. Sometimes – and this happens to me all the time – you have this amazing questio...