Final-year acting student Alex Stamell was deep into rehearsals for Will Eno’s Middletown when the Covid-19 shutdown was announced at Sydney’s National Institute for Dramatic Art (NIDA).

“There were rumours swirling around before that, but then it all happened very quickly,” Stamell said. “We showed up to what we thought was going to be a rehearsal but it was actually a showing for staff and students. But we could only do half the play because of the hustle to close the school by 6pm.”

It was a “chaotic time”, she said. “And it was frustrating not being able to finish something I was really invested in. It was really hard to let go of that.”

For the students of NIDA, 2020 has been a profoundly unusual year.

Seven weeks into the first term of the academic year, the emerging actors, director, designers and craftspeople of Australia’s highest-profile performing arts training school were sent home as the tertiary education sector went into lockdown. Study continued, but with classes delivered via Zoom.

Like all other performing arts schools around the country, NIDA has faced the challenge of moving what can be literally hands-on teaching methods into the online space.

“It’s been deeply odd,” said Pierce Wilcox, a lecturer and director at NIDA.

“The intimacy of acting training is being done in isolation in bedrooms and share houses. Voice coaching, you can just about do online. Acting tutorials, too, to an extent. But movement coaching? I had a student tell me about their parents walking in on them rolling around on the floor pretending to be an animal. Pretty embarrassing.”

For set and costume design student Angus Konsti, it’s been a struggle at times.

“This industry is all about meeting with people and brainstorming ideas with paper and pens. You can’t do that over Zoom. The whole design process has had to become more verbal, which is a completely different way of working for me.”

Isolation is another challenge, said Konsti.

“It’s been quite lonely. Until last week, I hadn’t seen anyone I’m working with face to face in months. It’s been very sad.”

The transition hasn’t been easy to accomplish, nor has it been unreservedly embraced by students. According to one insider, a number of students expressed their discontent in a letter of complaint to NIDA’s CEO Liz Hughes. Months of acting teaching via Zoom is not what they signed up for, but almost all students knuckled down to get through the pandemic online.

The cancellation of the school’s prestigious midyear productions, which attract the attention of agents, directors and industry figures, also came as a disappointment. (The high-stakes, end-of-year productions will go ahead if there isn’t a second wave in Sydney, so there is still hope around getting in front of an agent in the flesh.)

David Berthold, NIDA’s director of the Centre for Creative Practices, admitted the shift to online teaching created anxiety for students.

“Taking training that is fundamentally embodied into an online space is difficult,” Berthold said. “You can only go so far with it. But now we are opening up again incrementally, working with small groups and toward a full opening of the school in the near future. Classes are Covid-safe with masks and social distancing. Singing and loud vocalising is a challenge – we’re making sure people stand three metres apart.”

On a positive note, the cancelled student productions have been replaced by a Digital Theatre Festival, open to viewers everywhere.

The six shows are short world-premiere plays streaming online – via Facebook, YouTube, Zoom and Twitch – and they’ve cracked open what a student drama production should look and feel like. Lunacy, for example, is a 1960s pulp sci-fi set on the moon. Lockdown is a story set on a virus-riddled cruise ship, a car boot, an ICU unit and the dark web. Roundabout is a comedy set in two Sydney houses – one an Airbnb rented for the show, and a yurt in Uzbekistan.

What the students lost in a staged production, they have gained in new skills, said Berthold. “They quickly worked out they were building a new toolkit for the future of storytelling. I’m quite convinced some gold will come out of all this, the seed of an idea that will change the way we all do things.”

Final-year acting student Leinad Walker has missed “locking eyes with other students” in a scene and the feeling of pushing his voice to the back of the room. “It’s been a massive challenge trying to connect through a screen, which is like a barrier,” Walker said. “But I’m optimistic that when I do come out of this and graduate there will be a wave of new and innovative creative work in the film industry waiting for us.”

The online festival is delivering a pandemic bonus. The productions are streaming globally so they may be seen by agents in Los Angeles or London, and the students are working with international industry figures they might not have encountered otherwise, such as the American writer and game designer Sean Stewart, the creator of Roundabout.

The play, rehearsed across Sydney-Los Angeles time zones, will be livestreamed on Twitch, a platform primarily used by video gamers.

“There is a video window and a chat channel,” said Stewart. “The audience has license to meddle with the story in the chat bar. High jinks ensue.”

More importantly, the show offers its actors a window into a possible future direction of real-time storytelling and entertainment, Stewart said.

“Actors working on Twitch and Facebook Live can respond far more flexibly [to the audience] than even a very good video game. It’s hard to see the future from here, but if I was going to bet my money, it would be on this kind of show.”

NIDA’s Digital Theatre Festival runs from 4-9 August 2020