What This Site Can Do

This page exists for two audiences. Students: it shows why the notes look the way they do. Teachers: it is a working reference for everything you can put in a page, with the source visible in every example.

Everything below is written in Markdown — plain text with a few marks of punctuation that mean something. If you can write a text message, you can write this.

Text that carries meaning

You get bold, italic, ~~struck through~~, and highlighted text. Highlighting is the one worth knowing: it draws the eye better than bold when you want a single key term to stand out in a paragraph.

How that was made:

**bold**, *italic*, ~~struck through~~, ==highlighted==

Arrows written as -> become proper arrows: rehearse → refine → perform.

Keyboard keys look like keys: press ⌘ + K to search.

Headings, and the table of contents

Every ## heading on a page becomes a link in Navigate this page, over on the right. Nothing builds that list by hand — it is made from the headings as the page is built, so it can never fall out of step with the page.

Deeper headings nest underneath: a ### sits inside the ## above it, which is why “Foldable callouts” appears indented under “Callouts”.

How that was made: ## at the start of a line, and ### for a sub-heading.

## Callouts
 
### Foldable callouts

Write headings for the person skimming

The table of contents is the first thing many students read. “Rehearsal checklist” tells them what is there; “More on this” does not.

Turning it off

A short page, or one that is mostly a list, reads better without a contents panel. Add one line to the frontmatter:

---
enableToc: false
---

Every class page in All Classes uses this. Open Thread 1, Day 1 and you will see no “Navigate this page” panel on the right, even though the page has headings that would otherwise appear there — an agenda of six items does not need navigating.

Callouts

Callouts pull something out of the flow of the page. There are a dozen kinds and each has its own colour and icon, so students learn to recognise them at a glance.

Note

Neutral information worth setting apart.

Tip

A shortcut, a habit, or something that makes the work easier.

Important

The one thing to take away if you take away nothing else.

Warning

Where people usually go wrong.

Safety

Used in this course for physical and emotional safety — see Our Ensemble Agreement.

Question

Something to think about rather than something to know.

Example

A worked case.

At a glance

Used at the top of task pages for due dates and format.

How that was made: a blockquote with the kind named in brackets.

> [!warning] Where people usually go wrong
> 
> The text of the callout goes here.

Foldable callouts

Add a - to start a callout collapsed — useful for hints, side-coaching notes, and anything you do not want an audience to see immediately.

One strong choice for a frozen image (click to expand)

Put one person on the floor, one at full height, and one in between — three levels, and suddenly the picture has somewhere for the eye to go.

How that was made: the - after the kind is the whole difference.

> [!success]- One strong choice (click to expand)
> 
> The hidden content.

Diagrams

Diagrams are written, not drawn — which means they can be edited in seconds and never need a graphics program.

Flowchart

graph LR
    A["Choose a source"] --> B["Explore it in role"]
    B --> C["Shape a scene"]
    C --> D["Rehearse"]
    D --> E{"Does it land with an audience?"}
    E -->|yes| F["Perform it"]
    E -->|no| B

How that was made: not a picture — these lines of text, between two fence lines that say mermaid.

```mermaid
graph LR
    A["Choose a source"] --> B["Explore it in role"]
    B --> C["Shape a scene"]
    C --> D["Rehearse"]
    D --> E{"Does it land with an audience?"}
    E -->|yes| F["Perform it"]
    E -->|no| B
```

--> draws an arrow, ["…"] makes a box, {"…"} makes a decision diamond, and -->|yes| labels the arrow. Change a word and the diagram redraws — no graphics program, and the change shows up in a diff.

Proportions

pie title Where rehearsal time goes
    "Blocking and stage picture" : 30
    "Running lines and cues" : 30
    "Trying alternatives" : 25
    "Polishing transitions" : 15

Sequence

Who says what to whom, in order — here, how a lighting cue gets called:

sequenceDiagram
    participant SM as Stage manager
    participant LX as Lighting operator
    participant A as Actors
    SM->>LX: "LX 12, stand by"
    LX->>SM: "Standing by"
    A->>SM: Line that ends the scene
    SM->>LX: "LX 12, go"
    LX->>A: Lights shift

Timeline

timeline
    title Stages through history
    500 BCE : Greek amphitheatre : chorus and masks
    1600 : Elizabethan thrust stage : audience on three sides
    1870 : Proscenium arch : the "picture frame"
    1960 : Black box : the room itself is flexible

Tables

How that was made: rows of text separated by |, with a line of dashes under the headings.

Element	What it asks	A question to test it
Role	Who am I in this?	What does this person want?
Tension	What pulls against what?	What is at stake right now?
Focus	Where should the audience look?	What is this moment about?

Checklists

How that was made: a list where each line starts with - [ ], or - [x] for one already done.

Space cleared and swept
Phones away, voices warm
Group knows its running order
Props set on the prop table

On the site they are read-only — the boxes show what the page says, and clicking one does nothing. Copied into a notebook, they are useful for keeping your place while setting up a performance.

Links between pages

This is what makes the site more than a pile of documents.

A plain link: Tableau
A link with different words: a frozen stage picture
A link to a section: Making one worth looking at

How that was made: double square brackets.

[[Tableau]]
[[Tableau|different words for the link]]
[[Tableau#making-one-worth-looking-at|Making one worth looking at]]

Transclusion — one page inside another

How that was made: ![[Page name]] — a link with an exclamation mark in front of it. Here is a curriculum expectation, embedded live rather than copied:

A2.2
use a variety of conventions to develop character and shape the action in ensemble drama presentations (e.g., use corridor of voices or a day in the life to extend their understanding of characters; use flashbacks or flash forwards to introduce new perspectives or create tension)
Link to original

Change the source page and every page that embeds it updates. This is how each task page shows the expectations it addresses without anyone maintaining duplicates.

Backlinks

Scroll to the bottom of any page and you will find Backlinks — every page that links to this one, gathered automatically. Nobody maintains that list. It is why linking generously costs nothing and pays off later.

Hover previews

Hover over Thought Tracking without clicking. The page appears in a small window. Students checking one convention mid-paragraph do not lose their place.

Footnotes

How that was made: [^1] where the marker goes, and a matching [^1]: line anywhere in the page.

The word “tragedy” reaches us from a Greek word usually translated as “goat song”.¹

Mathematics (not used in this course — but here if you need it)

A drama course has no equations, so you will not meet these in our pages. The site can typeset them anyway, which matters if you also teach a course that needs them. Inline maths sits in a sentence, like $E = m c^{2}$ ; display maths gets its own centred line:

sightline height = \frac{stage height + eye height}{2}

How that was made: single dollar signs keep it in the sentence, double ones give it a line of its own.

Inline: $E = mc^2$
 
Display:
$$
\text{a fraction} = \frac{\text{top}}{\text{bottom}}
$$

Code (also not used in this course)

The same is true of program code: fence it with three backticks, name the language, and it comes out coloured and exact — spacing preserved, quotation marks untouched. Useful in computer science; here, only as proof it works.

def call_cue(number):
    return f"LX {number}, go"

What you cannot see

Two things on this page are invisible in the browser:

Comments. Text wrapped in “ never reaches the site. Useful for notes to yourself in a page you are still writing — side-coaching reminders, casting ideas, next year’s fixes.
Holding a page back. A page with publish: false in its frontmatter is left out when the site is built. Write next week’s lesson today and publish it when you are ready. A page with no publish line is published, so forgetting it can never make your work vanish.

For teachers reading this

With more than one section, per-section keys like publishForSection1 and publishForSection2 let one shared page be published to one class and held back from another — useful when your two sections are a few days apart.

The point of all this

None of it is decoration. Each feature removes a reason for a page to be out of date:

Feature	The problem it solves
Transclusion	The same text copied into six places, five of them stale
Backlinks	”Where did we use this again?”
Diagrams as text	Rebuilding a diagram from scratch to change one arrow
Holding a page back	Keeping unpublished work in a separate file somewhere
Checklists	The performance-day scramble

Write it once, link to it everywhere.

Nobody is entirely sure why — theories involve prizes, sacrifices, and costumes. The uncertainty is half the fun. ↩

📚 ADA1O S1

Navigate this site

What This Site Can Do

Text that carries meaning

Headings, and the table of contents

Turning it off

Callouts

Foldable callouts

Diagrams

Flowchart

Proportions

Sequence

Timeline

Tables

Checklists

Links between pages

Transclusion — one page inside another

A2.2

Backlinks

Hover previews

Footnotes

Tags

Mathematics (not used in this course — but here if you need it)

Code (also not used in this course)

What you cannot see

The point of all this

Navigate this page

When did we do this?