Middle School Articles for Drama Teachers

Tableau is a fantastic introductory theatre topic for middle schoolers. The word “tableau” comes from the phrase tableau vivant, or “living picture.” In tableau, students use their bodies and...

By this point, students will have learned about and practiced miming preparatory skills (including stillness, focus, and visualization), portraying items of different weights, and interacting with...

We’ve all seen the classic “mime stuck behind an invisible wall” routine, and when you mention miming to students, typically they’ll immediately start waving their hands around in that fashion....

In our previous Middle School Miming article, students explored using their hands and arms to maneuver invisible objects of various sizes around a circle. Now, we’re adding moving throughout the...

Students new to mime will often just start moving their hands haphazardly, like an item magically appeared in their hand out of thin air. But one of the ways a mimed object is made “real” is by...

The Emergency Lesson Plans: Middle School Drama Class Task Sheets resource is specifically designed for the middle school drama teacher. Everything you need is at your finger tips: task sheets with...

Miming is a great topic for middle school drama students. The art of miming uses the actors’ bodies and imaginations to tell a story, without using their voices. It’s all about “making the unreal,...

Welcome to our Featured Play Spotlight. Middle school: a wild mix of excitement, nerves, and really big eighth graders. With a large cast and relatable characters, School Daze by Lindsay Price is...

Do you need a simple warm-up to quickly get your middle school students into the drama class mindset? Try this classic game, with a drama class twist. Students will share what they’re bringing on...

There are many different ways to analyze a scene for classroom study or performance: verbing, marking up the script, identifying subtext, making lists, and more. Some of these methods are easy and...

It’s exciting when well-known books, films, and television shows get turned into stage productions. Plays and musicals like The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical, The SpongeBob Musical,...

Theatre is all about conveying emotions onstage through our voices, gestures, facial expressions, and body language. With middle schoolers, who are often in the midst of learning how to deal with...

Something teachers notice frequently when working with middle school students is that when the students are performing a two-person scene onstage, they tend to turn their bodies directly towards...

*Welcome to our Featured Play Spotlight. * A Recipe of Me by Kate Kilpatrick is an incredible ensemble play with authentic middle school characters for middle school students. We see people all the...

Box by Lindsay Price is a middle school vignette play with flexible casting. It can be expanded for a large cast or reduced to a cast of 10 with doubling, and has excellent small scene and...

The Super Non-Heroes by Taryn Temple is a fantastic middle school play that looks at friendship, acceptance and discovering yourself. Have you ever felt like you don’t belong? Powerless Charlie...

Have you ever wanted to be a superhero? Taryn Temple’s The Super Non-Heroes is a fantastic middle-school play that with an important message: Be kind to people, especially those that are different...

Relevant themes, easy-to-connect-to characters and fun, fun, fun! Hoodie by Lindsay Price examines appearance and image in middle school, allowing students to immerse themselves in subject matters...