January started with a simple goal: to have 1,000 Facebook fans and 1,000 Twitter followers by the end of the year. We’re lagging on the Twitter front (my fault, totally) but the Facebook thing is getting crazy! We’ve reached the 1,000 mark nearly ten months early.
We want to thank you. I mean, really thank you. We’re blown away by your support and your contributions to the page. So we’re giving away free plays all day long.
Visit our Facebook page and/or Twitter account frequently today. That’s where we’ll be announcing each free play giveaway. Stay on top of it! Scripts will only be available for very short time periods.
And please help us spread the word. Tell your friends about us. When we hit 2,000 we’re going to have to give away something REALLY good.
“we have a responsibility to continue the tradition to entertain, to educate and to enlighten our audiences, without whom we couldn’t exist.”
World Theatre Day is coming up at the end of March. Click here to read the Message for 2010 from Dame Judi Dench.
I want to pass this great idea on for World Theatre Day especially for folks on the Internet. Record a short 1-2 minute video of yourself on the theme “Why I love the theatre.”
This is a survey from University of Arizona about your experiences in high school theater and speech. It may be used to promote high school theater education. It only takes a few minutes, and could help prove very valuable to keeping theater programs alive. If you are in touch with other folks who did theatre in high school, or who are still in a high school theater program, please pass this on.
While the article focuses on movie acting, but it certainly applies to the stage. The best characters are three-dimensional, and that means they are living, breathing, thinking human beings. A great character actor does more than skim the surface, and say the lines. They say the lines as if they are being formed in their brains, thought through, coming out of their lips for the very first time.
This is an excellent jumping off point for discussion, especially with young actors. Students have their hands full with learning the dialogue, figuring out what to do with their feet and hands, maybe there’s a shade of character development. It’s asking a lot to add ‘think your lines’ to the mix. But that’s not to say they can’t. Sometimes all you have to do is ask…
One way to get students to focus on the ‘thinking’ that goes into a line is to work on subtext. Subtext involves a distinct separation between what is thought and what is said. It’s a good place to start! Exercise: Improv a restaurant scene in which the conversation is about the restaurant and what they are going to order. Explore the following subtexts:
A wants to break up with B.
B wants to propose to A.
A and B are planning to run away together.
A and B are planning a bank heist.
A and B are planning to rob their next door neighbour.
The RSC (Royal Shakespeare Company) has a great resource for theatre teachers, or for any teacher teaching Shakespeare in the classroom. It’s a website called Stand Up for Shakespeare.
The site features resources for anyone teaching Shakespeare for the first time, including lesson plans for elementary schools, high schools, and even for families teaching Shakespeare in the home.
I don’t have anything else to say really. I just want to make sure you’re all aware how awesome student writers are. Student playwrights rock.
At the Waterloo district Sears Drama Festival this past weekend there were three student written works. I taught two workshops adding up to around 50 participants. I ran out of paper. They wrote their fingers off. A number of students wanted to know more, more more about how to avoid writer’s block, how to make a living as a writer, would I read their play (you bet I would).
Welcome to this week’s Spread the Love. This week we are talking about Camel Dung and Cloves by Dara Murphy. The play takes place in a teenage girl’s bedroom. Where, for some unknown reason, the main character is setting out a tea service and for some unknown reason has paid someone to come and drink tea with her and the tea may or may not contain the ingredients camel dung and cloves.
Now if that sounds really weird to you, that’s because it is. The play is really really weird; the characters are weird, the story is weird, and the twist ending is very, very weird. And that’s what we love it and that’s why it’s in our catalogue.
Because it’s important to support the weird. Not everyone wants a vignette play, not everyone wants a Shakespeare spoof, and not everybody wants an intense period drama. Sometimes you want to read something weird because you know what? There are some weird teenagers out there. I was totally a weird teenager and I would have loved to have read this play and have been in it. There are girls out there who don’t want to play cheerleaders and ballerinas. They want weird. So, that’s why we love this play. Craig what do you love about Camel Dung and Cloves?
Well, what I love about Camel Dung and Cloves is….. it’s weird.
That’s it for Spread the Love.
Lindsay spreads the love for Theatrefolk’s Middle School Material. Middle School Monologues for Girls, Middle School Monologues for Guys, and our brand new Middle School scene book.
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