Challenging times call for innovative measures. When composer Matt Conner’s plans to teach musical theater at summer day camp and continue giving private piano lessons were put in peril, he knew he had to figure out a way to do things differently, and fast.
Not surprisingly, he turned to Zoom. When quarantine became a thing in March, recalls Conner, he and husband Stephen Gregory Smith, a longtime local actor, were poised to teach spring break musical theater classes for kids at Creative Cauldron, a popular nonprofit professional theater in Falls Church, Va.
When classes moved online, Conner and Smith embarked on a crash course in videoconferencing, learning its precise features and discovering how best to use it as a teaching tool.