Reflection Articles for Drama Teachers

Once a show has finished, the “post-show blues” often hit students. This can have a number of symptoms, including obsessively quoting lines and song lyrics from the show, starting every story with...

Different venues can have a huge effect on a production. They can create beautiful and intriguing staging options for directors and designers, and really surprise and enchant audiences. They can...

Success in the drama classroom can be a challenging thing to measure. Not all students who take drama want to go on to become professional performers or technicians. Many students take drama simply...

Coming to the end of a show’s run is an incredibly emotional experience. You’ve put hours and hours of work into a project that, in the end, has ceased to exist. Yes, you have the memories you’ve...

For some of you, school has already started. For others, that first day is looming right around the corner. Either way, it’s easy to get tossed into the whirlwind that is the beginning of the...

We’re always asking students to reflect. It’s almost like a knee-jerk reaction. Reflect on that exercise! Reflect on group work! Reflect on the unit! Here’s a rubric just for reflections! But how...

Theatre is all about change. Not only do we want to look back and identify origins, but it’s also important to explore theatre history to see how the form evolves. Often that evolution comes from...

Uta Hagen held a lot of influence in 20th century American Theatre. She made her Broadway debut in 1938 in Anton Chekov’s The Seagull. She also acted against Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named...

Drama teacher Joshua Hatt started using Google Drive as a response to the frustration of having his students lose curriculum booklets time and time again. His work developed into a powerful online...

It’s the first day of semester. You have a Grade Nine / Drama One class or a group of students you haven’t worked with before. They stare at you, you stare at them. How can you determine what they...

Performances are rarely the only area where learning occurs in the drama classroom. What goes on during instruction, what happens in rehearsals and group work, how problems arise and are solved —...

The biggest obstacle to writing a play often comes before the first word. It happens in the idea stage. I want to write, but my ideas are stupid. I know I could write something great but where do I...

Characters come alive in the smallest details: a favourite food, a favourite type of music, a fear of spiders, an allergy to plums, a scar from a fall at two years of age, a love of reality...

Critical Thinking is a buzzword. It’s one of the keystone 21st century skills. How do we incorporate critical thinking into the drama classroom? Provide steps not buzzwordsCritical thinking is a...

Today’s students are visual learners. They look at screens all day long, it makes sense that they are going to be grabbed by a picture instead of something they hear or read. So why not bring the...

Jessica Stafford of Owensboro Middle School was in the middle of rehearsing Hoodie for the KTA middle school festival. She generously shared this “Positive and Negative Post-it Exercise” she used...

How often do you self-evaluate? Teachers ask students to evaluate themselves all the time. Self-evaluation is an important part of the learning process; it cultivates critical thinking skills, it...

Who am I? It’s a question not a lot of people ask. Who am I? What defines me? Effective artistic expression begins with you. If you’re going to write a well detailed character, you should know...