Be sure to review One-Act Adjudicator Guidelines for general advice for adjudicating.
Accessing Your “Ballot” #
Log in to live.speechwire.com. You will see a section, WISDAA Theatre adjudication. Titles of plays will appear, which link you to the evaluation screen for each respective play.
Evaluation Screen #
Scoring/evaluation instructions →
Save your work buttons (throughout page) Click often! →
Play title/playwright →
Link to video (adjudicators log in to AnywhereSeat.com to access) →
Play information as entered by the director/advisor from the school. →
Accessibility requests (and technical considerations now combined; in blue, if applicable)→
Cast/crew list (opens in new tab) →
If assigned oral response, questions posted by the director/students →
Running notes – you can either type directly in here, or type in a separate document and paste →
Evaluation criteria – for each area, select a rating (see instructions, top of evaluation screen), and comments.
For virtual one-acts, please be mindful of limitations of realizing several technical elements of productions, especially for videoconferenced one-acts. Answer these as best as you can, and when in doubt, give a higher score rather than deducting points.
Lighting and/or sound must be opted in or out by the director/advisor, so these may or may not appear on the evaluation, depending on which the director selected. →
Have we mentioned the value of saving early and often?
If assigned the oral response (see section below for more guidance), this is where you paste a video link. You can return to this evaluation after saving and leaving, and paste the oral response video link at a later time.
Important Guiding Principles #
- Please watch videos continuously without pausing, rewinding/rewatching, so you are evaluating the work as if you were watching the play perform live, in person.
- Please be mindful of challenges of capturing a live performance, including access to equipment, lighting/sound challenges, bandwidth considerations, medical requirements for masking, etc. Our role as adjudicators is to provide constructive and instructive feedback as to the approach the school used to tell the story they’re telling; not to armchair direct how a scene should have been staged.
- Please offer detailed feedback as to what could be improved, citing specifics of what the production did. That said, be gracious. Also, while the rules stipulate a 40-minute time limit, this is not enforceable at the district level; only Sectional and State.
- Should you have any questions as to adherence to rules, please adjudicate the show as you normally would have, but also email office@wisdaa.org with specifics of your concern, so we may investigate, accordingly.
Watching the Video & Adjudicating #
- If possible, watch the play submission on one screen, while typing on another.
- If you have a second screen on your computer, you can open the video in a new window and drag it to your second screen.
- You may log into SpeechWire on two devices (a laptop and tablet, or two different computers), and play the video on one, while you type on the other.
If you have one device, you might watch the video and take running notes on paper, and use that as a basis for typing your comments/transcribe into SpeechWire.
Video Recording an Oral Response #
The oral response has long been one of the most valuable facets of our One-Act Theatre season. Unfortunately, we lose the dynamic of interactivity between the oral respondent adjudicator and the director, cast, and crew, but we are trying to uphold some of the value of hearing someone encapsulate their thoughts about the show. While we considered layering in additional time this year to allow for conferences of the panel of adjudicators, the logistics of coordinating that for each play were more than we have the bandwidth for right now (literally and figuratively). Therefore, we are simply asking adjudicators identified as the oral respondent to take a few minutes to share some encouraging thoughts in a video response.
Here are two possible options for recording, either on a mobile phone, or a computer:
Option A: YouTube App on Phone #
If you have the YouTube app on your phone, you can record and upload a video fairly easily:
1: Tap camera icon at the top of the screen; select “Upload a video”
2: Tap “record” when ready (flip to selfie camera if necessary); tap red record button.
3: When finished recording, tap the round button with square (stop); then tap “Next.”
4: Give the video a title, and change “Public” to “Unlisted” for privacy; then tap “Next”
5: Select, “Yes, it’s made for kids;” then tap “Upload.”
Option B: Record a Zoom Meeting on your Computer #
Even with a free Zoom account, you can start a meeting with yourself, record it, and save the file to your computer to then upload to either YouTube, Google Drive, or Dropbox (please make sure you share the file to be viewable by anyone with the link). Click here for full instructions to record a Zoom meeting: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/201362473-Local-recording
To upload, go to YouTube.com, click the videocamera/+ icon in the upper right-hand corner, select “Upload video” and follow the prompts. Be sure to note that it’s made for kids, and on the “Visibility” screen, save/publish as unlisted. Then, copy the link and paste into SpeechWire.
