This article details the journey of a Theatre and Performance team working in Australian higher education during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using reflective practice informed by Social Constructivism, we addressed the dilemmas of building and shifting an online community of learners. Act One considers the unknown as we shifted online, and the new year gave way to a semester of developing solutions for teaching theatre in isolated learning environments. This focused on: peer-to-peer communication; group tasks in solo formats; and mechanisms for support. Act Two details the shift back into face-to-face collaborative learning environments focusing on artistic voice and flexible collaboration. How does one re-establish an ensemble while recognizing potential traumatic experiences? We developed effective pedagogical strategies in response to the crisis and pre-existing fault lines within a theatre curriculum. As the world recovers, we must recognize that the journey taken must inform future practice.

PurposeIn contrast to prior studies examining burnout in academic employees, this paper explores how academic employee agency mitigates burnout risks in the context of the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) and how this agency facilitates research productivity and influences well-being in the face of changes in learning and teaching practices.Design/methodology/approachThe authors use collaborative auto-ethnography (CAE) in the higher education (HE) sector to probe how an employee productivity group supported the group's members during the pandemic.FindingsThematic analysis revealed four emerging themes: burnout, beneficial habits for research productivity, blocking-out-time and belonging. The authors' findings suggest that by acknowledging and legitimising employee-initiated groups, feelings of neglect can be combatted. Purposeful employee groups have the potential to create a therapeutic, safe space and, in addition to the groups' productivity intent, diminish the negative effects of a crisis on organisational effectiveness.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to the literature by utilising a CAE approach to provide greater insight into how academics enact agency by creating digital research workspaces, attending to the spatial dimensions of well-being especially during turbulent times.