As I have mentioned here before, shake & stir theatre co is a Brisbane-based theatre company which does an astronomical amount of work each year in both the performing arts and education sectors. This includes multiple mainstage performances across Australia, a broad school season focusing on links to the P-12 Australian English and Drama curriculum, and many in-season opportunities for their mainstage works. The company even broadened their horizons in 2017 and 2018 by producing the Australian tour of American Idiot the Musical. This company is not one short of passion.
Let’s be honest. In terms of live performance, there is little good news across the industry given the current COVID-19 situation resulting in venues closing, long-planned festivals being cancelled and fully-booked shows being postponed. However, some great news has come from shake & stir theatre co, who have quickly responded to the situation so they can at least maintain some commitments regarding their education program. Today, the company launched Shake & Stir Virtual, an online portal featuring “professional, multi-camera recordings of all of our in-school performances, along with extensive accompanying teachers’ resources and some useful and entertaining special features”.
As highlighted above, while this might not be a perfect alternative to having the s&s team in the classroom, they are making use of such technology to ensure they have some level of engagement with students. They will be hosting live Q&A sessions with their performers and creatives, ensuring students get any questions answered by the professionals.
This is not a public access service however, and is only accessible to teachers and their students at this time.
