Way back in late March and early April, I had a few rehearsals for Metamorphoses online, in hopes of putting up the play after quarantine. Although that'll most likely not happen, online theater does provide a challenging twist to acting. Recently, I had auditions for my freshmen fall play. Because of quarantine, they pushed back A Midsummer Night's Dream till the Spring. Instead, we auditioned for a Shakespeare festival where we all do difference scenes from a variety of Shakespeare plays.
If you don't know anything about Shakespeare, it has a lot of physical cues and eye contact to properly express the script. This makes it especially hard to convey Shakesperean dialogue over a video call.
One reason for that is because it's hard to make eye contact. In one scene between Hermia and Lysander, where they're meant to be intensely in love, the actors found themselves struggling to figure out where on the screen to look to express that love, making it really hard to properly convey it.
Another reason that it's hard to act over Zoom is beacause physical cues like putting your hands on your head or shaking hands is also made difficult. Like acting nervous is made harder when you can't pace or put your head in your hands.
One more thing that was made difficult by the online nature of this rehearsal is lines that are said simultaneously. In person, it's easy to pick up when people are going to say lines by using eye contact and body language. Since it's hard to see people over Zoom, it makes it hard to see when they're going to start the line, and makes it even harder to know when to jump in.
Even though all of these things are made harder, it's still worth it to attend online rehearsal because really, these difficulties help us become better actors. Since it's harder to convey eye contact and body language, we just have to be adapt and be at it. This way, when we do go back to real rehearsal, we'll be better actors!