Teaching

Teaching is an incredibly rewarding profession; many even consider teaching to be their calling. Theatre and drama teachers have the privilege of sharing their passion for performing arts with their students, and watching them learn and grow not only as performers, but as people too. However, even the most enthusiastic and passionate drama teachers go through rough patches or a slump now and then. If you’re losing your passion for teaching theatre, consider the following questions. You can use them as journal prompts, conversation starters, or simply for contemplation. 1. How long have you been teaching theatre? 2. What do you currently like about teaching theatre? 3. What do you currently dislike about teaching theatre? 4. What is something you used to like about your job, but don’t anymore? What happened? 5. Has anything changed recently? • School life, students, personal life • Is something at home affecting your work life? 6. What specific aspects of teaching theatre are getting you down? • Are you having trouble adjusting to distance learning? • Do you enjoy working directly with students but dislike dealing with parent questions? • Do you prefer working with a certain grade level of students over another? • Are you stuck teaching plays that your administration likes but you don’t? 7. Would you teach theatre even if you didn’t get paid? Why or why not? 8. What are your strengths in the drama classroom? What could you do better? 9. What could you change or adjust about your program? 10. Can you delegate any of your tasks to someone else? 11. Is there something you can remove, not do, or stop doing? 12. How do you feel about your students (past or present)? 13. Do you still enjoy working on shows/productions? Why or why not? 14. Have you noticed any physical changes recently (emotions, pains, aches)? • Are they affecting your teaching, or is your teaching situation affecting your physical self? 15. Imagine taking a long holiday or sabbatical. How does that make you feel? 16. Do you teach any other subjects? Or, would you rather teach a different subject? • If so, what subject would you teach? 17. Have you considered leaving the profession or retiring? 18. Would you be happy doing another creative endeavor, such as directing professionally, teaching dance classes or vocal lessons, or performing yourself? 19. What do you like the most about theatre in general? 20. What do you like the least about theatre in general? Now that you’ve clarified some of your thoughts and feelings about your teaching situation, what can you do about it? Below are some suggestions. You’ll notice that some of them are conflicting; that’s because we’re all different. Some teachers may benefit from immersing themselves in theatre-related activities, while other teachers would be better off taking a full break from any theatrical endeavours. • Write about your feelings. Journal, write a letter, or express your joys or frustrations. Review what you’ve written. Does anything jump out at you? Circle any repeated thoughts, feelings, or phrases. Or, rip the paper up and throw it out. Observe how you feel. • Talk to a trusted colleague about how you’re feeling. Have they ever lost their passion for teaching? • Ask other drama teachers for tips on how to mix things up in your drama program. How do they keep up their passion for teaching? • Ask your returning drama students what they enjoy most about drama class, and why they continue to study drama. • Adjust your curriculum. Are there topics that you particularly like that you could focus more deeply on? Are there topics you dislike that you could reduce or eliminate? If you love mask work but dislike tableau work, could you focus more heavily on mask? • Take a class, course, or workshop on a theatrical topic you’d like to learn more about. • Volunteer on a community theatre production – on or offstage. • Go see a show or watch a video of a theatrical production. • Take a break from watching, listening to, or reading about theatre. • Think about what made you decide to pursue teaching theatre in the first place. • Think about what you love most about theatre, and why you think it’s important to share that with your students. • Reduce your course load or reduce/eliminate your participation in extracurricular projects. • Take a sabbatical. We hope you can rediscover your passion for teaching theatre, and regain your teaching mojo. A passionate teacher is a true gift for their students, because their passion is palpable. When a teacher enjoys their work, that positive energy is shared with their students, and it makes the drama classroom an even better place to be.

Whenever you receive a new list of students for your upcoming drama class (or classes), you aren’t just about to teach X number of students – you’re also going to be dealing with many (or most) of their parents. But before you stress yourself out over possible parental issues, read on for five tips for dealing with the parents of your drama students. We hope this will help you stay calm and cool this semester. 1. Remember that parents are only focused on their own kid, while you have to focus on the full class/cast.It can be hard for parents to remember that your focus is not solely on their own little darling; you have many students to keep tabs on. Drama class in particular is different because of the large frequency of group work and collaboration involved. Many parents don’t realize that their child’s actions often affect the rest of the drama class. While it is important to listen and reassure parents that you have their child’s best interests at heart and are focused on their learning and growth, you have to keep a full group awareness at all times. Which leads us to our second tip… 2. Encourage students to advocate for themselves before their parents get involved.I am grateful that I haven’t had to deal with this too often, but in the past I have had to speak with parents because they were upset that their child wasn’t cast into a particular role or because their child was apparently unhappy about something that happened in the classroom. In these cases, I listened carefully to what the parent was saying, particularly if it had to do with bullying, or the student’s health. However, it was always important to try and discover whether what we were discussing was a genuine concern from the student, or if it was the parent who was actually upset. In these cases I always ask the parent, “Have you spoken to your child about this? What did they say?” and then encourage the student to come and talk to me directly about the issue. You will often find that it is the parent who has the bigger problem than the student, and frequently the parents are contacting you without having spoken to their child about the perceived issue. Of course, every situation is unique, but most problems can be dealt with if the student comes to speak to you directly. This also is a good life lesson for students and parents alike to learn – that parents will not be able to solve their child’s problems for them all the time, and that students need to be brave, speak up, and advocate for themselves if they have concerns. 3. You may have to educate the parents too.I once spoke with a parent whose daughter had been in a number of productions, but had yet to be cast into a leading role. She was always in the ensemble. The parent was considering pulling her kid out of the current production. I asked this parent, “How does your daughter feel about this? Has she told you she is unhappy in ensemble roles?” The parent eventually admitted that their daughter loved being in the productions, regardless of the role, and it was the parent who in fact wanted their daughter to have a larger role and was annoyed about having to drive their daughter to and from rehearsals for (in their words) “a nothing role.” The parent also admitted that their daughter would be mortified if she knew they were calling me (which was touched upon in tip #2), and that the world of the theatre was unfamiliar to them, as they had come from a sports background. In this case, I explained the similarities between theatre and sports (teamwork, collaboration, practicing/rehearsing to increase endurance and improve skills, and so on) and made a comparison between first string in sports and leading roles in the theatre – not everyone is going to be the star player, but everyone is an important part of the team as a whole. I also encouraged the parent to speak directly to their daughter about the show, both to learn what she loved about theatre and to learn about the process. While you may not be dealing with parents who are sports enthusiasts, it’s important to remember that the world of drama and theatre can be a foreign place for many people, including parents. Have patience and take some time to educate parents on the ins and outs of drama class and/or the production process, and encourage parents to talk to their kids about what they’re learning and enjoying about theatre. You may also consider having an experienced theatre parent write up a letter to new parents explaining their perspective and learning process as their child went through drama classes and school shows. Experienced “theatre parents” are an asset, as they have “been there and done that” and can reassure other parents that what they are experiencing is normal. 4. Get parents on your side right away with regular updates.Parents like to be kept updated with what is going on in their kids’ lives, especially when they are trying to extract details from them. (“What did you do in class today?” “Nothing…”) It can be frustrating for parents who might feel like they’re totally out of the loop. If you have a teacher’s website, try to update it at least once a week with whatever you are working on in class, for each drama class you are teaching. Alternatively, you may wish to send a mini newsletter to your students’ parents – perhaps weekly, or at the very least, once a month. Be sure to include important dates (such as performance dates or tests/exams/assignments due), opportunities for volunteering (if applicable), and fun photos whenever possible. Parents love seeing photos of their kids! 5. Email templates are your friends.If you frequently write emails of a similar nature over and over, create a series of email templates to save your time and sanity. This way you can simply copy/paste and adjust the “Dear Mr./Ms. So-and-So” and you won’t have to reinvent the wheel each time you receive a similar question from yet another parent. Frequent messages I’ve received include: • Information requests about assignment due dates • Questions about bringing particular costume items from home • When and how to purchase show tickets • Why didn’t my child get cast into the role that they desperately wanted • Requests to explain the audition process (both before and after auditions) • Where and when is the graduation ceremony • Requests for letters of reference for job applications or scholarships

A learning style refers to the way students best acquire and retain information. The VAK learning style refers to three different ways of learning: Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic. For example, let’s say you have a student who is interested in learning how to run your school’s soundboard. A visual learner would most likely read the instruction manual or watch a video to learn the ins and outs of the board. An auditory learner would prefer to listen to you give verbal instructions. A kinesthetic learner would want to physically press buttons and turn dials to get a feel for the board and find out what each button controls. You will undoubtedly have students of all three types in your drama classroom, so it’s important that your instructions cover the three different learning styles as much as possible. While it’s not always possible to focus on all three styles in every lesson, try to mix up your instruction methods to keep your lessons interesting, engaging, and fun for your students. Let’s look at some ideas for giving your students instructions for different learning styles. Visual – learns best by reading / seeing• Give written handouts or reference sheets • Write instructions on the board or use a projector for students to read • Show students a video demonstrating the lesson • Use posters, photographs, or charts • Post instructions on a classroom website for students to download and read • Have students take written notes on your instructions • Show students a demonstration of the activity Auditory – learns best by listening / hearing• Give verbal instructions • Have students repeat back your instructions out loud or re-state your instructions in their own words • Ask students verbal questions for comprehension • Try and keep the room quiet to eliminate distractions, so students can listen more effectively Kinesthetic – learns best by doing / practicing / moving• Give short instructions so students can get up and try the lesson right away • Have a volunteer student help to demonstrate the instructions with you • Have students highlight or colour-code important information • Have students give responses using different methods, such as drawing, dancing, creating a physical scene, or using hand gestures • Have students lead warm-ups or teach a portion of the lesson to the rest of the class Once you’ve figured out some different methods for giving instructions in the three learning styles, experiment to find out ways to combine two or more methods. For example, give students handouts and have them take turns reading the instructions out loud, or show an instructional video and get students up on their feet to try the activity right away. You may wish to poll your students to find out how they prefer to receive instructions. After all, an engaged class is a productive class!

School’s back in session and it’s time to get your students excited about the play and focused on the process. Easier said than done? Not with the right planning and resources in place. We’ve tried to streamline the process by rounding up some of our best tips and guides to help get you started – from choosing the right play to the casting process, rehearsals and kicking off the production process. Choosing a Play:What Play Do I Do Now? Overwhelmed by the many play choices available to you or have specific criteria you’re looking for? We can help make your search a success! 5 Things to Consider When Selecting a Play for Production Mounting a school production is a wonderful learning opportunity for students and staff alike. It’s also a big challenge. Before auditions are scheduled and sets start to take shape, here are five things to consider when selecting the show that your school will produce. The School Play Shopping List Before you start looking through mountains of scripts, check out our shopping list of ingredients and make your search for the ultimate production piece a recipe for success. Auditions:The Ultimate Auditions Guide: Teacher Edition These seven sections take you through the audition process and provide suggestions for some common issues and conerns. Auditions don’t have to be nerve wracking experiences! How Do You Cast School Plays? In our travels to various conferences we’ve heard of a lot of different ways to cast school plays. Here are a few of the casting techniques we have encountered: Rehearsals:10 Questions to Ask During Rehearsal Questions are important in the theatre. They’re more important than answers. Here are ten of the most memorable questions we’ve been given in rehearsal. Getting Excited: How to Get Buy-in At Your First Rehearsal As drama educators, it’s your responsibility to get your students to “buy into” the show–to agree with and accept the show. Think of it in terms of selling your show to your students. Let them know the show’s “selling features.” Demonstrate what’s in it for them. Here are five suggestions to help get students enthused about your show from the get-go. Production Process:Approaching Your Script: What Directors Need to Think About Before Beginning the Production Process Here’s a jumping off point for approaching your script, inspired by the ever-useful “5 W’s” – who, what, where, when and why. How to Solve Common Beginning Actors Mistakes Beginning actors make mistakes. Mostly it’s because, well, they’re beginners! I prefer thinking of them is missteps rather than mistakes – they are things the beginning actor hasn’t considered. And it’s always a great time to change that! Warm-up Round Table: Warm Ups for Different Types of Plays Whether you’re rehearsing Shakespeare or devising an original work, there’s a warm-up just for you. Producing a Show: How a Great Process Will Lead to a Great Product The experience of working on a show is a multifaceted experience, but it can really be broken down into two main parts: the product and the process.

Whether you’re an experienced drama educator or brand new to the world of theatre, it always helps to have a plan in place. We’ve rounded up some of our best resources to help ease the transition back to the classroom so you and your students can hit the ground running. First Week Resources:Drama Teachers – What’s Your Goal? It’s easy to get tossed into the whirlwind that is the beginning of the school year. It’s just as important to check in with your needs and goals for the upcoming year. You know what you want for your students, but what do you want for yourself? 10 First Week Activities for Drama Class The first week of drama class can be the toughest of the semester. The activities that work best tend to be games and exercises that are simple and let everyone get to know each other. Lesson Plans for Drama Teachers Looking for lesson plans? Look no further! We’ve compiled a big ole’ list of links plus a printable PDF: Top Ten Tips For Writing Awesome Lesson Plans! 10 Questions Every Teacher Needs to Ask You love to teach, right? Some simple check-ins and self-evaluation can help you hold on to that love for years to come! 3 Get-to-Know-You Games Many games may seem simple or silly, but they are a good way to gauge your students’ abilities and willingness to participate. We have three simple games that can be used as “get to know you games” or even warmups. 3 Tips to Learn Students’ Names Quickly It can be challenging to learn names in a drama classroom. But with a little preparation and some practice, learning names quickly will become easier and easier. Classroom Management:Top 10 Classroom Management Tips for Drama Teachers Whether you are a beginning teacher facing a classroom full of students for the first time, or a grizzled theatre veteran (with the creative battle scars to prove it!), here are our top ten classroom management tips! 5 Ways to Quiet Down a Noisy Drama Class (Without Yelling!) Drama class is fun. But you still need to have your students’ focus and quiet so you can teach amazing lessons without having to constantly raise your voice. Here are five different ways to request (not command!) quiet, without having to yell. 3 Ways to Engage A Large Drama Class With larger classes, it can be harder to get to know students individually and meet everyone’s needs. With a little bit of planning ahead, engaging your large drama class can be a smooth process. Here are three tips that can help. Ordered Chaos: Balancing Structure and Creative Activity in the Drama Classroom The Drama Classroom is a unique place. There must be a balance between creative activity and structure in the drama classroom. How do you set your drama classroom up for success? New Drama Teacher Toolkit Are you new to teaching drama? Whatever you’re going through, you are not alone. Find articles on classroom management, exercises, activities and podcasts where you can hear directly from other teachers.

Last semester, one of my classes consisted of a group of students who had little theatrical experience. Most of these particular students had never performed onstage before. They were eager and enthusiastic, but as we got closer to our final showcase performance, the nerves really started setting in, and their anxieties came flooding out in the form of what seemed like a million “what if” questions. During one class, it seemed like every student’s fears came bursting out, all at the same time: “What if I got sick and had to miss the showcase?” “What if I fell and broke my leg before showcase?” “What if I get to showcase and I forget all my lines?” “What if my scene partner is sick on showcase?” “What if I forget my costume shirt?” “What if I throw up during the showcase?” I had to laugh a little, because the questions came at me so quickly and fervently. At that moment, my poor students looked like they were going to faint from worry about all these hypothetical, but in their eyes, catastrophic events that might occur. And it almost seemed like my students were making a game of the “what if” questions, trying to “one-up” each other by describing increasingly distressing scenarios: “What if one of us was hit by a bus on the way to the showcase?” “What if one of us DIES before the showcase?!” (In that extremely unlikely case, we’d have much bigger issues to deal with.) It took some quick thinking, but I was able to help my students with their fears to the “what if” problem with a five-part solution, as follows. Feel free to try these ideas with your students, if you see or hear nerves taking over! 1. Introduce and/or remind students of the concept, “THE SHOW MUST GO ON.” Aside from “break a leg,” “the show must go on” is probably the most common theatrical motto. It means that no matter what happens, the show will be performed in some fashion. The cast and crew must bond together, assess the situation, come up with a solution, and take steps to enact that solution, while remaining calm at all times. 2. Brainstorm possible solutions. Next, turn the questions around on the students by asking them, “What do you think we might do in this situation?” Have students brainstorm ideas that might help solve the hypothetical problem at hand. For example, “What happens if someone gets sick before the showcase?” The absolute worst-case scenario would be to cancel the show, so eliminate that as an option right away. Possible solutions might include: • Seeing how sick the student is just before the show and see if they can perform anyway. • Having an understudy in place. • If the role is double-cast, sending the alternate actor onstage. • Having a member of the ensemble play the role “on book” or “with book in hand” (aka going onstage with a script). • Planning out who will cover the missing student’s transitions as a group before the show. • If the student’s illness is that they have laryngitis or have lost their voice, having someone sing/speak their lines backstage while the student mimes the role onstage. • An assistant stage manager or member of the staff plays the role. • Starting the show a few minutes late if the student is feeling better. Right there, are eight possible solutions for the hypothetical sick student. Your students will have even more ideas. 3. Act out possible solutions. Once your students have brainstormed some different solutions, have students get into small groups of 4-5. Each group will receive a “what if” situation, and the groups will create two brief (1-1:30 minute) scenes. The first scene will be a silly, over-the-top solution, with the purpose of trying to make the class laugh. The second scene will be a more realistic, practical solution, that could actually be enacted should the situation actually occur. Each group will present their scenes to the class. If time allows, encourage discussion of the solutions afterwards. What solutions were the most practical? What solutions would be the easiest to enact? 4. Share some of your own stories. I think every director has had some sort of “horror story” that has happened to them during their time in the theatre. For example, I have experienced not one, but two power outages during two different shows. Fortunately, both had happy endings with the show going on in the end. For one show, we brought in emergency floodlights from the wood shop and were able to finish the show, and for the other, since it was a nice summer day, we planned to perform outside of the theatre in the courtyard–but then the power came back on, and we were able to perform in the theatre (albeit two hours behind schedule, but the show still happened!). Share these stories with your students and particularly focus on the creative solutions you and your cast/crew employed to keep the show going. 5. Encourage positive thoughts and healthy habits. It doesn’t do to dwell on the negatives, and remind your students of that. Yes, it’s normal to have worries, but by focusing on all the “what ifs” that might happen, students can’t truly engage in the process. Encourage students to journal about their worries if they still occur, but to also come up with ideas on how to overcome the hypothetical situations. As well, encourage your students to take up healthy habits, such as getting enough sleep, eating well, using their planners to keep their schedules in order (which helps avoid stress and double-booking), avoiding situations such as participating in extreme sports or screaming their guts out at concerts right before the show, getting their acting bags/costumes organized ahead of time, and drinking lots of fresh water. Focusing on self-care can help to ward off stress, illness, and injuries. Healthy students = a more successful show! Good luck!

Whether you’re an experienced drama teacher or brand-new to the field, every drama educator needs more – more resources, more exercises, more help, more time. We’re so excited to introduce a brand new resource that will make your life as a drama teacher easier! The Drama Classroom Companion is filled with helpful articles and hands-on exercises to help build the skills needed for theatrical performance. Written by Lindsay Price and Kerry Hishon, it also addresses real world skills like creative thinking, critical thinking, collaboration, and communication. Each section comes with handouts that you’ll be able to use right away in the classroom, too! And did we mention the BONUS Reflections and Rubric section? No other class encourages students to develop real world skills like the drama classroom – it’s so much more than putting on plays or “playing games.”

It’s a new year and a fresh start! If you’ve been teaching the same classes for a long time, your curriculum might be feeling a bit stale. Yes, it’s always going to be different when you teach it to new students, but it’s always good to mix things up and add to your repertoire. You’re always encouraging your students to reach out and learn more about their interests, right? Well, take a page out of your own book and learn something new too! You’ll feel refreshed and rejuvenated, and you’ll have something new and exciting to share with your students. Below are eight different theatrical New Year’s resolutions for you to explore. Look them over to see which ones appeal to you, then get out there and complete them. Notice which ones don’t immediately appeal to you, or make you pause and consider. Push yourself out of your comfort zone and challenge yourself to do those resolutions too! Reading & Research1. Read five new plays. It’s always good to expand your repertoire of plays and musicals. You may find great pieces to use for your upcoming class or school production. Also, consider individual scenes and monologues that your students could use in classroom exercises or for audition purposes. (While you’re at it, why not start a binder full of monologues that students could peruse? You can start here! 2. Read three new theatre-related books. There are tons out there, from biographies to non-fiction and everything in between. Two books I recently enjoyed were Theater Geek: The Real Life Drama of a Summer at Stagedoor Manor by Mickey Rapkin and Drama High by Michael Sokolove. 3. Learn five new theatrical techniques/games. Tired of playing Park Bench over and over? Me too. Here are a whole bunch of fun games to try. And why not explore new theatrical topics to add to your teaching repertoire? For example, this year I taught mask work for the first time in my class. Although I was really nervous about it, my students really enjoyed learning something new and exploring it with me. It might inspire some new work or start some interesting discussions. 4. See five new shows for inspiration. I frequently tell my students to see as many shows as possible, to open their minds to new and varied interpretations of various works, and to learn more about different shows. As the teacher, that is doubly true for us! Get out and see some shows, whether they’re at other schools (maybe you can plan a field trip for your students), in the community, at professional theatres, or in cities you visit while traveling! On a recent trip to Pittsburgh, I saw The Toxic Avenger musical while my husband caught a Steelers game. It was such a fun show, and inspired my stage combat choreography for a production of She Kills Monsters with my students! Reaching Out & Getting Involved5. Reach out to three colleagues in your city or district. Are you connected with other drama teachers in your area? Send them an email and get together with them! Other teachers can be great resources for sharing lesson plans and classroom management tips, creating connections for sharing production resources (props, costumes, set pieces), and fostering friendships! 6. Reach out to three theatre people from your social media community. Get on Facebook and Twitter, use those #theatrehashtags, and see what interesting people you find! Reach out and send them a message, ask a question, form a friendship! Who knows what fun connections are out there for you! 7. Attend a conference or festival. Get your travel on and meet with drama educators and theatre professionals in one fell swoop! There are lots of conferences and festivals available, like the World Festival of Children’s Theatre, iTheatrics’ Junior Theater Festival, and many state/province festivals. Search for conferences with workshops specifically for teachers. 8. Get involved in a community theatre show. When was the last time you worked on a show that wasn’t related to school–purely for your own enjoyment? Get out and audition for a show or volunteer backstage! Share your experiences with your students, and invite them to come see your work outside of the classroom!

“Cross-curricular” is a huge buzz word. We’ve talked previously about how you can explore other subjects through drama, but what about drama in other classes? We recorded a podcast with two Theatrefolk playwrights who are also teachers: Taryn Templeuses drama in her Spanish classes and Amanda Murray Cutalo uses drama in her English classes. Both believe in the power of theatre for their students. How do they use drama in their classrooms? Use Stories to Teach LanguageTaryn teaches Spanish through stories, because she has found that students are much more likely to remember something if it’s in story form. For example, if a teacher was trying to teach the words “green” and “hippopotamus,” students might remember them. But, if the teacher told her class that there was a green hippopotamus dancing on a coffee table, the students get a more concrete image in their minds. As a further extension, the teacher can ask questions like, “What color is the hippopotamus? Where is the hippopotamus? What is it doing?” And all of this is done in the target language. The teacher is actually using the target language both to tell stories and to ask questions about them. Use Creativity to Teach LanguageOnce students are comfortable with the idea of storytelling to learn a new language, the students begin creating their own stories. They use costumes and props to build their language skills in a fun, engaging way as they perform the stories they’ve created. Use Performance to Teach VocabularyStudents demonstrate understanding of new vocabulary through short performances. For example, when Amanda’s class is learning new vocabulary words in her English class, she will introduce and go over the words, then give the students a situation. They have to write and perform a skit where they use as many words as possible in the correct way. Use Improv to Teach Novel StudyYou can grab any scene or storyline from a novel, and turn it into an improv activity. For example, in studying The Scarlet Letter, Amanda’s class had to improvise a puritan meeting where they’re deciding the fate of Hester Prynne. Another way to use improv is by having students write alternative scenes to plays that are studied – like The Crucible or A Streetcar Named Desire – and improvise these scenes. Use Acting to Build ComprehensionA cross-curricular approach can be much more kinesthetic. When students get up and actually perform a character, they are able to remember it more. They engage in and remember activities where they were completely immersed in the world that the author has created. *Click here to listen to the full podcast conversation with Taryn and Amanda. *

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 school year: deciding on plays, setting up procedures, and writing curriculum for multiple classes. All of that work is important to have a successful and smooth running classroom. However, it’s just as important to check in with your needs and goals for the upcoming year. You know what you want for your students, but what do you want for yourself? How often do you self-evaluate?Teachers frequently ask students to evaluate themselves. Self-evaluation is an important part of the learning process; it cultivates critical thinking skills, promotes self-reflection, and (hopefully) fosters a sense of responsibility for one’s work. Self-evaluation is not just for students. Teachers also need to develop critical thinking, practice self-reflection skills, and identify goals for their work. Self-evaluation can help you: • Give focus to your teaching • Determine areas you love • Recognize areas you don’t • Highlight your strengths • Pinpoint skills to improve • Avoid burnout. • Become a better teacher Many teachers don’t have time to sit around and reflect throughout the year. So why not do it now, before the roller coaster really gets going? This will give you a document that you can refer to periodically to see if your goals have changed. You’ll be able to review it at the end of the year to see what you accomplished and what you can improve on. Where do I start?The beginning of the year is all about promise. What do you aspire to achieve? How do you feel when you look at the year ahead? 10 Self-Evaluation Questions for the beginning of the year:1. What are my teaching goals for this year? 2. How have my teaching goals changed from last year? 3. What do I love about teaching? 4. How will I bring my love of teaching to the classroom? 5. What do I hate about teaching? 6. What action will I take to deal with these negative feelings? 7. What is my top strength as a teacher? 8. What is one area I feel needs improvement? 9. What action will I take to improve this area? 10. What am I looking forward to the most for this year? Bonus! Finish these sentence starters. • Teaching is important to me because… • I am the kind of teacher who… • I aspire to be the kind of teacher who… • I expect all teachers to… • The one word to describe my teaching goal this year is…

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 often do you reflect? How often do you give serious thought to what you do in the classroom, what skills do you implement on a regular basis, and what areas would you like to change? The answer is that teachers, especially drama teachers, have little to no time for anything extra. The day is full enough as it is! But as the years go by, there’s always going to be some things that work well with some students but not other students. The more you’re aware of your skills and strategies, the easier it will be when you have to adapt them. Summer may not be the time when you want to think deeply about your classroom, but the school year is right around the corner. And before you know it, you’ll be back in the trenches implementing the same procedures with the same level of success. If that’s worked for you, great! You’re awesome and you should be rewarded. A well-run classroom is a work of art. But what if things aren’t working as smoothly as you’d like? What kind of questions should you ask yourself? We’ve put together a Free Classroom Skills Reflection for Teachers. You can download the PDF below. There are 25 questions for you to think on, ponder, and (of course) reflect over. Do it by the pool with a cold drink in your hand. It is summer after all. Here are some of the questions:1. What makes a good teacher? 2. What five words come to mind when you think of a successful classroom? 3. How do you establish expectation? 4. What changes (if any) do you want to make in how you establish expectation? 5. How often do you use modeling in the classroom? 6. What is your classroom management strategy? 7. What (if any) changes do you want to make to this strategy? 8. What are you learning or want to learn?

“Communication: the means of connection between people; the imparting or exchange of information, thoughts, opinions.” Communication is vital to a successful theatrical experience. A play is a two way street – what is sent from the stage gets an immediate response from the audience. There is an exchange that doesn’t happen in the movie-going experience or the reading experience. It is an actor’s job to communicate to the audience and they will answer back. Communication might be the most important 21st century skill students can learn in the drama classroom. We communicate with each other in the real world every day, in a variety of ways: verbal, nonverbal, physical. We often have to navigate the minefield of miscommunication with mixed messages or people who refuse to listen. A student may resist creative thought or creative action – “I can’t do that, I’m not creative. I can’t act. I can’t be in a play.” But every single human being benefits from learning how to communicate. We need communication skills in family life, in relationships, in the workplace, and in the school hallway. How can you practice communication in the drama classroom?Define: Define communication with your students. Find out how they communicate with each other and why they communicate the way they do. Explore: With 21st century students, it’s all about texts and snapchats. It’s much less about face to face interaction. Have students lead an improv game where they have to provide the instructions via snapchat. Observe what happens. Do students engage, because this is a form of communication they’re drawn to? Or is this an example of how in-person communication is still valuable? Explore: Over the course of a month, every student has to teach a warm up game at the beginning of class. Communication is a different experience when you’re the leader. What’s it like to be in charge? Do your fellow classmates listen? Why or why not? Did you communicate the game effectively? Why or why not? How would you change your instruction to communicate more effectively? Discussion and Theatricalization: Click below for a PDF downloadable Communication Quotes page. Divide your students into groups, have each group discuss a quote. What does it mean? Why is the statement being said? Do you agree or disagree? Then have each group theatricalize their quote. If they were going to turn the quote into a scene, how would they do it? Give each group 15 minutes to come up with a 1 minute scene to present. Reflection: Theatre is an act of communication. Reflect on this statement. What comes to mind when you read it? Why might theatre be an act of communication? Do you agree or disagree? If you disagree, why isn’t theatre an act of communication?

“How can you get your students to brainstorm effectively?” Brainstorm: a group discussion to come up with ideas and solve problems. Brainstorming is a great idea generation and problem solving technique if it’s used in a focused way. That may seem beside the point – come up with any idea! But only in this way! But the fact of the matter is that to tell students to “brainstorm” is too vague. If you want to hone your students’ group-think skills, then brainstorming needs a structure. Each session is contained and follows the same procedure. (Such as: put as many ideas on the page as you can, reject nothing, and then discuss and decide on ideas to move forward with.) Brainstorming sessions without structure can turn into fights, students can shut down if they feel judged, and the overall result is unsuitable for further exploration. How do you get your students to effectively brainstorm?Example: Brainstorming for a group playwriting projectConsider the example of writing a play as a group. Brainstorming is often the first step in a playwriting project and it would make sense that the first task is brainstorming subject ideas. But to tell students “brainstorm ideas for a play” is a vague suggestion. There are so many possible subjects, this could end up as an exercise in frustration. You want the brainstorming sessions to lead students to come to a consensus, to work together, and to feel comfortable contributing to the process. Implement a step-by-step structure for brainstorming ideas. In this case, work backwards. Have students brainstorm on form first, then topic, and finally theme. Why do we end with theme instead of begin with theme? It certainly feels like the most specific point to start brainstorming. Playwriting often feels like an overwhelming venture. To say “write a play” is daunting for most students. It leads to blank stares and blank pages. By using a brainstorming exercise to identify specific attributes of the play, it gives students tangible steps toward writing instead of starting from scratch. And the brainstorming itself gives students practice working together, negotiating, and participating in the decision making process before the first word. Hopefully this will make the actual group writing a smooth endeavor. FormFirst, have your students think about the type of play they want the finished product to look like. Don’t worry about the content, what skeleton or framework will the content live in? Ask students: what form do you want this play to take? What’s the most important quality? Comedy? Drama? Absurd? What kind of characters do you want the play to have? It’s a great place to start brainstorming because every drama student has an opinion on that – if I could be in any kind of play, what would I want to do? Get students to think about the audience response – if they want to shock the audience, that’s going to determine the form. Comedies don’t often shock an audience. If they want to make an audience laugh, then they’re probably not going to go for an absurd form. Brainstorm Divide students into small groups and have them brainstorm and come to a conclusion as to how they would finish the following sentence starters: • We want to perform the kind of show that…. • The characters in the play should be… • The most important quality in this play is…. • We want the audience to respond with… Instill a procedure that happens with every brainstorming session: All ideas on the page, no judgement, discuss and then a final decision. Instruct groups to take one sentence starter at a time and come up with as many different endings to the sentence as possible. A minimum of ten for each sentence starter. Then groups have to decide on the most important three, and then finally come to a conclusion on the way to end the sentence. TopicThe next phase is to brainstorm on a topic. Before that though, there is one very important question to answer: Who is the audience for our play? That is going to determine a baseline for the topic selection. For example, if you’re going to write a play for the middle school students in your area, that means everyone in the audience is 10-12 years old. What kinds of topics resonate with this age group? What topics are off bounds? Brainstorm Once you determine the audience, have students brainstorm possible topics for that audience. The best exercise for this is to automatic write ideas. Automatic writing is a great exercise for getting words on the page without censorship or self-criticism. That is the key component of brainstorming – words on the page. The more topics that groups can put on the page, the better. Instruct students that no idea should be thrown out, rejected, or scorned. Everything goes on the page. It works well to give a time limit (no more than 5 minutes) with this exercise to push students to come up with one idea after another and to not overthink the process. Once groups have a page of ideas, it’s time for students to discuss them and decide on five. What are the five topics that make the most impact? Each group presents their list to the class and then from that list the entire class discusses and decides on five. Those five are then discussed and a final topic is chosen. If students have difficulty choosing a topic, remind them of their audience and their answers to the form sentence starters. If students decided that they wanted to write a comedy, then the topic of depression isn’t going to match their chosen form. This is not to say that the form can’t change, but this is a great way to keep students focused on moving forward with their brainstorming and decision making process. ThemeYou’ve chosen a topic. For example, a comedic play for a middle school audience on the topic “The first year of High School.” The last step in the brainstorming process is to discuss theme. What are the most important themes within their topic? Essentially, this determines the plot for the play. What the characters will worry about, what the scenes are going to focus on. Brainstorm Give students a time limit to gather as many themes on the topic as possible. How do you narrow down the topic? Again, no idea should be scorned, rejected, or criticized. This is when brainstorming can go awry. When a student feels judged for their ideas, they’re going to stop participating. This is the last thing you want in a collaborative endeavor. During each session, your job is to make sure groups stay on each step along the way: All ideas on the page, no judgement, discuss and then a final decision. At the end of these brainstorming sessions, students will have the form, the audience, the audience response, the topic, and possible themes for scenes. That is a lot of “effective” work!

The first week of drama class can be the toughest week of the semester. A drama class is quite different than a “regular” class. Students need to be comfortable with each other before the “real work” can begin. The objective of the first few drama classes is to build that comfortable environment. There are three things you need to do: • Break the ice • Establish an environment of trust • Turn the class into a community The activities that work best for the first week of drama class tend to be games and exercises that are simple and let everyone get to know each other. Where to start? We've made it easy with Ten Fantastic First Week Activities for Drama Class - all created to help you prepare for a week packed with creativity, laughter, and self-discovery! Click the link below to download and get started. Wishing you a great start to the new school year!

In an age of seemingly endless assessments of our students’ ability to critically read and analyze literature, there is a dire need for them to experience a variety of texts in a variety of formats in order for educators to better train them to get at the heart of what a writer is doing. Because of this, dramatic works fit perfectly into any curriculum attempting to tie the Common Core standards to what the students, at the end of the day, know and are able to do. Of course, dramatic works are already mentioned in the Common Core as one genre with which our students should be interacting. But educators don’t always see them in the same light as more traditionally taught formats, like novels. It’s true that plays generally offer less student face-time with words than novels. However, they offer much more in the way of student engagement, unlike any other text-based medium. This significantly increases the likelihood of success in teaching them to see the literary techniques and authorial tricks-of-the-trade that the Common Core requires. “It’s one thing to read about something; it’s an entirely different thing to perform it.” The act of reading aloud, hearing the words, and portraying the ideas on the page makes clear what mere words cannot. It’s one thing to read about something; it’s an entirely different thing to perform it. Tone, theme, mood, inference, denotation/connotation, language use, structure, plot—all of this is present in plays and, to be sure, more easily seen by a “reader” because it’s literally seen by the reader. With our school’s work with my play Stereotype High, we hit every single one of these elements during our production. We had on-going discussions about theme, character motivations, word choice, the interrelatedness of the scenes, allusions to other works, teen language, and any number of other text specific issues wherein understanding the work was at the core of the discussion. As much as Stereotype High created multiple opportunities for students to explore all the standards of the Common Core, it’s not something specific to that particular play – it’s impossible to perform the words without interpreting them (and the characters saying them). And this is exactly why plays are a perfect fit with the Common Core. With regard to the general reading of dramatic works in the classroom, the following Common Core standards apply (grade nine standards, although there is little difference between these standards and the ones two grade levels above and below): Reading: Literary TextCCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.1 Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly, as well as inferences drawn from the text. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.2 Determine the theme or central idea of a text and analyze in detail its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped or refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.3 Analyze how complex characters (e.g., those with multiple or conflicting motivations) develop over the course of a text, interact with other characters, and advance the plot or develop the theme. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.4 Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in the text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the cumulative impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone (e.g., how the language evokes a sense of time and place; how it sets a formal or informal tone). CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.5 Analyze how an author’s choices concerning how to structure a text, order events within it (e.g., parallel plots), and manipulate time (e.g., pacing, flashbacks) create such effects as mystery, tension, or surprise. * CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.7 * Analyze the representation of a subject or a key scene in two different artistic mediums, including what is emphasized or absent in each treatment. * CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.9 * Analyze how an author draws on and transforms source material in a specific work (e.g., how Shakespeare treats a theme or topic from Ovid or the Bible or how a later author draws on a play by Shakespeare). **These two are of particular importance as, since most teachers are already incorporating Shakespeare and Greek drama into their classrooms, these standards completely apply to modern adaptations.* WritingUnlike most classical prose, plays inspire students to write plays. They’re shorter, more accessible, and tap into their authentic language so much more directly than any sort of prose can. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.9-10.3 Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective techniques, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.9-10.3.A Engage and orient the reader by setting out a problem, situation, or observation, establishing one or multiple point(s) of view, and introducing a narrator and/or characters; create a smooth progression of experiences or events. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.9-10.3.B Use narrative techniques, such as dialogue, pacing, description, reflection, and multiple plot lines, to develop experiences, events, and/or characters. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.9-10.3.C Use a variety of techniques to sequence events so that they build on one another to create a coherent whole. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.9-10.3.D Use precise words and phrases, telling details, and sensory language to convey a vivid picture of the experiences, events, setting, and/or characters. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.9-10.3.E Provide a conclusion that follows from and reflects on what is experienced, observed, or resolved over the course of the narrative. LanguageUnlike the printed word, plays provide a spoken tone (and, possibly, a physical action) to a word that may further help a student understand new language. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.9-10.4 Determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases based on grades 9-10 reading and content, choosing flexibly from a range of strategies. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.9-10.4.A Use context (e.g., the overall meaning of a sentence, paragraph, or text; a word’s position or function in a sentence) as a clue to the meaning of a word or phrase. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.9-10.4.B Identify and correctly use patterns of word changes that indicate different meanings or parts of speech (e.g., analyze, analysis, analytical; advocate, advocacy). CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.9-10.4.C Consult general and specialized reference materials (e.g., dictionaries, glossaries, thesauruses), both print and digital, to find the pronunciation of a word or to determine or clarify its precise meaning, its part of speech, or its etymology. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.9-10.4.D Verify the preliminary determination of the meaning of a word or phrase (e.g., by checking the inferred meaning in context or in a dictionary). CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.9-10.5 Demonstrate understanding of figurative language, word relationships, and nuances in word meanings. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.9-10.5.A Interpret figures of speech (e.g., euphemism, oxymoron) in context and analyze their role in the text. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.9-10.5.B Analyze nuances in the meaning of words with similar denotations.

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 promotes self-reflection, and hopefully a sense of responsibility for one’s work. Self-evaluation is not just for students. Teachers too need to develop critical thinking, self-reflection and a sense of responsibility for their work. A successful teacher is a connected teacher – able to identify what’s going right and what needs improvement. A connected teacher never stops learning from what they do in the classroom. Self-Evaluation can help you: • Determine areas you love. • Recognize areas you don’t. • Highlight your strengths. • Pinpoint skills to improve. • Avoid burnout. • Become a better teacher. What assessment questions do you ask yourself on a regular basis? Teachers don’t have the time to self-evaluate after every class. But every teacher should have an action plan in place to touch base with how they’re doing throughout the year. This is especially true for new teachers – the more you assess what’s happening in the classroom, the quicker you’ll improve, and the more confidence you’ll have. Students can spot a floundering teacher a mile away. The bottom line is that you love to teach. Self-evaluation can help you hold on to that love for years to come. Where do I start? Ask and answer questions that establish an outlook for the year, gauge how you’re doing in the middle, then reflect back at the end. If you work in a semester system, change this to the beginning, middle, and end of the semester. Here are 10 Self-Evaluation Questions for each step. Beginning of the YearThe beginning of the year is all about promise. What do you aspire to achieve? How do you feel when you look at the year ahead? 1. What are my teaching goals for this year? 2. How have my teaching goals changed from last year? 3. What do I love about teaching? 4. How will I bring my love of teaching to the classroom? 5. What do I hate about teaching? 6. What action will I take to deal with these negative feelings? 7. What is my top strength as a teacher? 8. What is one area I feel needs improvement? 9. What action will I take to improve this area? 10. What am I looking forward to the most for this year? Bonus! Finish these sentence starters. • Teaching is important to me because… • I am the kind of teacher who… • I aspire to be the kind of teacher who… • I expect all teachers to… • The one word to describe my teaching goal this year is… Middle of the YearThe middle of the year is about the specifics and the students. What is happening in the classroom? 1. How do I feel about my teaching halfway through the year? 2. What is working with my students? Are they learning? 3. What is not working with my students? Why aren’t they learning? 4. What action will I take to improve student learning? 5. Is my classroom well managed? Why or why not? 6. What action will I take to improve classroom management? 7. Are my students engaged or disengaged? 8. What action will I take to improve engagement? 9. Am I engaged in the classroom? 10. What action will I take to improve personal engagement? Bonus! Finish these sentence starters. • Halfway through the year and I want to keep on… • Halfway through the year and I want to change… • Halfway through the year and my teaching goals are… • Halfway through the year and I feel the students are… • The one word to describe my teaching thus far… End of the YearThe end of the year is about reflection. How far have you come? Where do you need to go? 1. Did I achieve my yearly teaching goal? Why or why not? 2. What was my best moment as a teacher this past year? 3. What was my lowest moment as a teacher this past year? 4. What action did I take to deal with this moment? 5. What action will I take so that this moment won’t happen again? 6. Did I feel supported by my colleagues and administration? 7. What action can I take to cultivate or improve this situation? 8. What professional development do I have planned? 9. How am I growing as a teacher? 10. What do I love about teaching? Bonus! Finish these sentence starters. • The one word to describe my year is… • As a teacher I am most proud of… • As a teacher I want to get better at… • My goal for next year is… • In five years I see myself…

Enjoy this replay of our January 2014 LIVE Drama Teacher Hangout. The topic was “Directing First Time Actors” with Forrest Musselman, a theatre teacher who shared some very valuable tips for working with beginning actors. Thanks to everyone who participated. We had a great time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1JeyKhGckM TranscriptLindsay: Hello everybody! Welcome to our Google Hangout! We’re sorry that we have started a couple of minutes later. As you will see, it’s just, it’s a me-show right now. It’s me! We’re supposed to have another teacher on for interview, Forrest Musselman, who is also one of our newest playwrights. He has written a play called A Deep Poetic Journey into Something. But this is live, and this is technology, and I have to tell you, we had an absolutely awesome dress rehearsal last night. So, as is the way with theatre, awesome dress rehearsal, opening maybe not so much. But we have a lot of questions. We sort of put it out there that this Google Hangout was going to be about some production issues that you guys face with your students and we were thinking specifically this is a great place to start those first-time actors, right? You are dealing with some students who have not been on stage before and they don’t quite know how to handle it. I’m sure you have all been in that situation where you have two beginning actors and they’re in a scene and they do the entire scene like this, facing each other, and it’s like, “Okay, that’s great… for you and you,” but that’s not theatre and there’s a whole sort of lingo and language that students have to learn and there is a whole… It’s just a whole scenario. So, you guys have really asked some very interesting questions about how do we help first-time actors on stage. And this really great one that I see in our Q&A – we have a Q&A actually here in the Hangout! There is a Q&A button which I think is over on the, well, it’s on my left-hand side. So, you decipher which one it is and I can’t say that I’m all that good at deciphering between my left and my right. But it’s there and I can see some of you have already chimed in with questions which is really awesome, and Annie, I see your question – “How do you avoid giving the standard note to inexperienced actors?” How can you be more [insert emotion here], right? It’s a result orientated note that I often feel compelled to give due to a lack of understanding of standard vocabulary. This is something that you see all the time. I see it when I was directing high school students and boy, do I see it all the time in my adjudicating. You know, when I am watching, there’s a lot of beginning actors I see giving monologues and dialogues, and also, when I adjudicate main stage or full productions or one-acts, that’s a note that comes up time and time again, you know? We need more. And, for me, what I want to convey to an actor is, well, “What does you character want? What’s going on with your character? What do they want in this moment and what are they doing to get it?” So, we take emotion completely out of it and I think that is the best thing to do. You don’t really want to say to a young actor, “Be sad. Be mad. Be joyful or angry,” because then what happens is you get the stereotypical “Argh! I’m so mad!” or “Uh-huh-huh,” and there’s lots of sobbing and it is the presentation of emotion rather than a character having a true experience. So, we need to take emotion completely out of it. So, that would be my very first thing to say is, “So, how do we approach the moment without the emotion?” and it always, always, always comes back to character want. “What do you want? What do you want in this moment and how desperate are you to get it? Are you so desperate that you are reaching that level of frustration? Is it something that you want that’s going to make you just so incredibly happy?” See? We’re getting to the emotion. The emotion becomes a bi-product of the want. And then, “What do you want? What are you going to do?” So, we have an action in there and that’s always good, too. If we can avoid emotion and if we can get an actor to think of action – because then that covers your blocking, too – and then, “What’s in your way?” “What do you want? What are you going to do? What’s in your way?” This nice little package just really covers, oh, it just covers character development in playwriting, it covers character development in script analysis, and it’s really a tool, it is really the number one tool that you can give to an actor to get them somewhere that we don’t need to rely on them overacting an emotion, right? That’s something that we don’t want. So, we have to go with, “What do you want? What are you going to do? What’s in your way?” and then, “How are you going to deal with what’s in your way?” And this is something too that, if they’re having trouble figuring that out for their character, go a step back and give your students scenarios as warm-ups in which they are involved. So, it could be a scenario between two best friends, it could be a scenario in which a student is trying to get a good grade, you know? So, you’re taking it right down to the situation that they find relatable – situations that they find relatable in their very life. So, if you can get them into situations in their very life then you can move them into acting a character that’s not them, then you can get them acting maybe into dealing with this notion of emotion. Craig: I have one too, Lindsay. Lindsay: Hey, Craig! I didn’t even introduce Craig. Craig is trying to find Forrest. Craig is waiting through the forest to find Forrest. But, please, tell me what you’ve got. Craig: Well, we’ve been in email contact and Forrest is trying to get on but we’re having trouble navigating the intricacies of the Google Hangout here which is funny because last night worked just fine but, of course, here we are. Lindsay: That’s what I said. Craig: Yes, I heard you. Lindsay: Good dress rehearsal. Craig: But you want to stretch it for time so I’m going to repeat what you said. Sometimes, though, I will say, sometimes this happens even in the professional world. There’s a miscommunication between the director and the actor and sometimes the director thinks they’re being very clear, and maybe they are, but maybe the director’s been giving so much feedback and the actor is clearly not getting what the director is trying to say and, you know, when someone keeps trying to tell you how to do something, it just gets harder and harder for you to process because clearly you’re not following what they’re trying to tell you and I know there’s this big bug a bear about giving line readings – a line reading is just where the director says, “Say it like this,” and that’s true, you don’t want the director going through the entire script telling you exactly how to say the line. But I’ve been in professional situations where even that – giving a line reading – sometimes the best way to communicate the emotions that you’re trying to get across is maybe what frustrated means to you is not the same way that the actor processes the word “frustrated.” So, sometimes, if you say, “I want you to say a line like this,” then maybe they can take that and then internalize it and say, “Oh! He means this!” which is something maybe different than the word you’re using, but you’re going to get that emotion across. So, line readings aren’t always a bad thing. Lindsay, how do you feel about line readings? Lindsay: You know what? I think you’ve got to use what’s in your arsenal. And there was another question on here – I think this one was on Facebook. It goes, “How do you read your actors?” and I think this is why a director’s job is so terribly difficult is that they have to determine individual acting styles and how individual actors respond to notes. And what you’ll find is that you have to come up with a different way of communicating with, maybe, you know, ten or fifteen different actors. And I think that you will find that you will be able to say, “Hey, can you bring me more,” and not even finish and you will get, your actor will go, “Hey! I can do this!” and then sometimes you’re going to have to give a line reading and I think that you can’t throw out something because it’s not done, right? Use every trick in your arsenal. All right. I see thumbs up! Craig: Yes, I had to come in with some breaking news here. It seems we’ve had someone join us, Forrest Musselman. Forrest, just put your thumbs up if you’re ready to talk. Forrest: I am ready! Craig: All right! Lindsay: So, Forrest, we had a brief conversation last night because you are in Minnesota. Forrest: Yes. Lindsay: And a brief conversation about the weather. How are you doing over there? Forrest: Well, it’s pretty balmy today. It’s actually twenty degrees this morning so we’re able to go outside and do some things. But it’s supposed to get really bad later, Sunday going into Monday. There’s an artic vortex moving in, they said on the news last night. Lindsay: Oh, my gosh. Forrest: So, we’ll be about twenty-five below on Monday. Lindsay: Well, ear warmers and everywhere. Okay. So, right now we just started talking about specifically dealing with the issues that often first-time actors have on stage, right? They get on stage and they don’t have the language and they don’t have the experience and they don’t have the lingo. So, they don’t often give the performance that they could. And you are in the middle of directing a show right now. Do you have any first-timers in your show? Forrest: Yes, I do. I have three or four that are new this year. Lindsay: And how are you dealing with that? Forrest: Well, for starters, I gave them very small parts. So, it’s a great experience for them to watch the older kids work and how they do things and that’s more of an observing sort of thing for me because they can sort of get a hang of what’s going on and then learn from that experience so that they can build experience and know what to expect when they come in for another show. Lindsay: Do you find using your older actors very useful in sort of grooming I don’t think is the right word but just sort of maybe instilling something in your younger actors. Forrest: Yeah, they tend to, I repeat the same things over and over and over again, and after a while, you learn as a teacher some of it becomes sort of like a Charlie Brown cartoon where you’re the teacher and it just kind of goes, “Blah blah blah blah blah blah,” the whole time. And, with kids, if they’re listening to their peers, it’s sort of they repeat the rules to the kids and say, “Hey, you shouldn’t do that,” or, “Watch where you’re standing,” things like that, and I just have to have patience and let the older kids sort of give instructions and then step in whenever I need to. Lindsay: I think that’s a really great tip. Another question that came through on Facebook was, “How do you instil the discipline needed to be successful?” and I think a great tip there is use your older students. You know, have them be the disciplinarians, yeah? Forrest: Yes, definitely because they know the rules and sometimes, especially when they’re seniors or juniors, they don’t have the patience or they think that they know everything at that point. So, let them assume the leadership roles. It’s a good learning experience for them, too. And sometimes I’ll talk to kids about how to be a leader and, you know, because sometimes they can get a little gruff or say some things to younger students and the younger students will take it the wrong way. And so, I use that as sort of a learning experience too to say, “Hey, maybe you shouldn’t have said this,” or, you know, “Be a little bit nicer,” things like that, and it usually works out pretty well. Lindsay: It’s a good teachable moment, right? Like, it’s for all – for the young ones and the old ones. Yes. Forrest: Exactly, yeah. Lindsay: Okay. So, let’s talk about the real basics. Let’s talk about, first off, memorizing lines. How do you get your students to memorize their lines? Are you good at motivating them? Forrest: Well, I just give them a deadline. So, you know, it’s usually I have a six-week rehearsal period and the first three weeks they’re allowed scripts and then there’s a certain day where they know that they’re off-script. And I don’t know how they do it. They always memorize their lines. They seem to be very good. I was never good at it myself when I acted in high school and college. So, it’s just a repetition thing, I think, for a lot of those, repeating them over and over again. Craig: Are there consequences if your students don’t know their lines by the off-book date or have you just been always been a lucky so-and-so and they’ve just always known them on the right date? Forrest: Well, it just gets frustrating for them. It’s almost an embarrassment for them because, if they’re off-script and they don’t know their lines, then they’re throwing off the rehearsal , and I always know that the first few days are going to be horrible – that nothing’s going to be accomplished because they’re off-script and they’re having a hard time, but it’s sort of a motivational thing that’s the equivalent of being naked on stage sort of like a bad nightmare. So, they want to get those lines memorized quickly so that they can start building on their characters and moving on from that. Lindsay: I think too what was really important was that your cut-off date is three weeks. So, they have three weeks. It’s not like, you know, the week of the show. So, they’ve had all that time as with the script as the crutch. So, I think that’s a really great tip. You know, chuck the script as soon as you can so that they are learning their characters without that script in their hands. Forrest: Yeah, you know, the first three weeks is just sort of about blocking and maybe finding their characters a little bit. But I’ve always found that they do not find their characters until the scripts are out of the hands and if they start internalizing the lines and so then they can start playing around with the lines and then the characters really start to come out after that. And so, that’s important for me. I feel like the three weeks is blocking and then that fourth week when they’re off-script is really nothing is getting accomplished other than they’re solidifying their lines, and then you have the remaining two weeks to really work with the characters and really fleshen things out. Lindsay: Cool. I just saw Jenny and Jenny I think I attributed your question to Annie but it was your question, and you have another question which is specific to learning lines. “Are you ever willing to remove a student from a show who won’t learn their lines?” Forrest: I’ve never had to do that. I’ve had to remove a student for not showing up for rehearsals or not showing up to school, and I’ve had to remove students for bad grades because they were failing some grades, but I’ve never had to remove a student for not knowing their lines, and I’ve been doing it for twenty years. I guess, I don’t know, I’ve been fortunate I guess. I’ve never run into that situation. Lindsay: That’s pretty good. Do you do musicals? Do you do musical scores? Forrest: Not really. I’ve done one musical in all of my directing which was the Wizard of Oz. Lindsay: Was it, like, a horrible experience? Forrest: It was pretty stressful, yeah, because I know nothing about music as far as teaching it and, I mean, I still had someone helping me but musicals are a big undertaking. It’s a lot of work there, definitely, because you have to bring in someone from music and someone that knows choreography and plus you have so many students that are in it in the first place so it’s a big undertaking and I’ve never been privy to doing them. Lindsay: We have another question here about comic timing. This particular teacher is doing Noises Off. “How do you instil comic timing in your students consistently?” What do you think, Forrest? Forrest: Well, in a way, that’s almost like a natural talent. You know, some kinds have it and they’re awesome and you don’t have to do anything with them. With others, you have to almost show them to model it. I do a lot of modelling sometimes. Lindsay: Oh, what does that mean? Talk about that. Forrest: Well, I’ll just come up on stage and I’ll do the line and I’ll show them how I think it should be done and then they’ll mimic it. So, that helps a lot. I’ve also done where they have to pause in a certain way and I always have them say, “Pause, pause, pause,” in their head or, “Beat, beat, beat,” or something that there’s internally thinking something and then that kind of helps with the timing, too. Lindsay: Craig, you’ve done a lot of comic acting in your career. What are some tips you have for teaching comic timing? Craig: Well, like, Forrest is right. I think it’s natural or it’s not. But, for the kids for whom it’s not, they can still learn a lot of basic techniques, one of which, especially with farce. Farce, for the actor, should be way more serious than any other genre of theatre. The wants, it should be above any other want that you ever played in any other play. So, the wants for the actor are just tantamount, even if you’re hungry, even if your character says, “I’m hungry,” they are hungry. They are insatiable. The other thing is, especially with farce but with all comedy in general, it’s just never, never, never, never be funny. Never try and be funny because that’s the worst thing in comedy is when you’re winking at the audience, and it goes again to the wants. It all really does just stick with the basic acting technique. It’s just what your characters want and what are the obstacles in the way, and it so happens with farce that whatever your character wants is huge and the obstacles are always way, way bigger – they’re always life and death, and if they’re not literally life and death then think of them emotionally in terms of life and death. Lindsay: Awesome. Oh, yeah, go ahead. Forrest: I always think of comedy too, especially with farce or anything that’s sort of over the top, is to always exaggerate or over-exaggerate, and I always tell the kids that I’ll pull you back if I think it’s too much and to keep pushing themselves. And I think a lot of it too is about posing and I always use, like, Jim Carrey as an example or any of the other good comedic actors that use posing or, you know, coming up and finding a position or just sort of over-exaggerating everything that they do. They’re a character upon themselves. Craig: Physicality and doing a little bit of workshop stuff with Commedia dell’Arte will go a long way to helping with what your characters resting state is – I forget what I was going to say. Lindsay, say it for me, will ya? Lindsay: Well, what I’m going to say is, I think, specifically the teacher asking the question about Noises Off, yes, do a workshop on Commedia dell’Arte. I think that’s going to be your best tool because there’s lots of exercises online that you can find to introduce those kinds of comedic timing techniques. Okay. Let’s talk about blocking. Forrest, when you are blocking a scene, how much creativity do you allow a student with your movement? What do you do? Forrest: Well, I usually have a basic plan for the scenes, you know, “Walk here and sit there and do that.” Once that’s instilled, I watch it a lot of times to see if the kid is comfortable, and if they have a tendency, if they look like they want to move somewhere or do something then, you know, I’ll encourage that. I’ll say, “Hey, you look like you just wanted to move there. Why don’t you go ahead and do that?” And they’ll ask questions, “Can I do this? Can I do that?” and, if I think it fits what’s going on, I’ll say, “Sure, go for it.” And I’m always changing the blocking, too. Like, there’s sort of an initial blocking then, as we keep exploring the play or moving forward, then we’re always changing things and always kind of experimenting with how we should move and where we should go. If the kids have ideas, that’s great, and sometimes their ideas are much greater than mine and that’s the great collaborative part of theatre. Lindsay: Absolutely. Craig: I agree, and I think it’s helpful to have that environment that you’re talking about, Forrest, where, if the actor feels an impulse to go somewhere, especially early blocking rehearsals, just go there. And, going back to what you said before, I was once told the best note you could ever get from a director is to pull back because you have to push yourself forward. The director can only push you so far. Forrest: Right. Craig: And so, if the director’s telling you to pull back then that means you’ve explored what you’re doing as deeply as you’re going to explore it. Forrest: Exactly. And I think I’ve only had to do that for maybe two or three students in my career so far where I’ve actually said, “Okay, you’ve gone far enough, that’s plenty.” Lindsay: I agree. I find students, they hardly ever are going as far as they could, right? Forrest: Right. Lindsay: And that would be so, I’m always trying to tell students, “You know, it’s always so much easier to pull back than to keep going so just keep going, keep going, and see what you can do.” Forrest: Keep pushing yourself. Lindsay: And it must be so great too, particularly with exploring blocking with, again, that three-week period where they are not on book. Like, I think that’s the best, that’s the longest I’ve ever heard in talking to teachers a process where our students are off-book and I think that’s fantastic. Forrest: Yeah, I guess I didn’t realize that. For me, that’s always been sort of a norm for me and I’ve done that since the first year that I directed so it’s a good process. It’s worked well. Lindsay: Do you find your blocking changes? Do you rehearse on stage or do you rehearse in a rehearsal room or classroom? Forrest: Yeah. Well, we’re fortunate enough that we have an auditorium in our school. We’re one of the few high schools in our county, really, that has an actual theatre, and it’s a small little auditorium – it’s only 200 seats, 200 people – so we’re able to rehearse on stage. It’s kind of a smaller stage compared to other schools but we actually have a stage so that’s good. Lindsay: I’ve been to so many barns, so many auditorium barns where it’s a huge stage and huge audience and the students get lost which leads to my next question which we have had a lot of people sort of chime in about and that’s projection. What do you do to get your kids to project? Forrest: Well, I do, there’s vocal exercises that you can do. One of the things that’s helpful for me is sometimes I’ll have all the kids just lay on the stage floor and put their hands on their stomach and then they do breathing exercises where they can feel the stomach going in and out, and then how it tenses up when you push, when you say, you know, “Hey!” and then they have to feel their stomach tighten up and I encourage that that’s where they need to be pushing from from the diaphragm. And so, that helps a lot also with enunciation – lots of the “lips, teeth, tip of the tongue,” those sort of vocal exercises and what-not. And then, I also do – I call it – the sound check where I’ll stand in the back of the theatre and then they’ll have to say a line and then I’ll say, “Well, that’s not loud enough because I couldn’t hear you,” and so that makes them recognize how loud they actually have to speak. And just during rehearsals too, doesn’t matter what’s going on, I’ll always stop if I can’t hear or understand a word. I’ll say, “What?” and then they’ll have to repeat it and go on. Lindsay: Instil it early, right? Forrest: Yeah. Craig: Well, I think it helps, as an actor, to go stand – and, again, this is something you could do professionally even if you have voice training – you go stand at the very back seat and watch a scene that you’re not in, and it tells you a lot about the space that you’re in and what kind of volume you need to put out there. Forrest: Yeah, and we have, like, one-act play competitions where we have to go different schools or colleges to compete and that’s one of the things that I’ll have them do – sort of sit in the back and listen to a play. I think that’s a great piece of advice to do that. Lindsay: Do you have any students who suffer from stage fright? Forrest: Yes, I do. Lindsay: Yeah? What happens? Forrest: Well, I’ve had students have nervous breakdowns. Lindsay: Oh, my God! Okay, I don’t need to know about that. Craig: But we’re laughing in a nervous breakdown here. Lindsay: How do you handle that, eh? Forrest: You know, you try to calm them down as much as you can. I always try to keep a light mood before the show. We’ll do warm-ups and joke around and have a lot of fun. I know they’re nervous but, to me, I always tell them too that to be nervous is good, and if you’re not nervous then something is wrong because being nervous gives you that energy. There’s so much energy with nervousness till all you have to do is harness that energy and make it a good thing, and that gives you the added extra oomphf that you need on stage. So, you just calm them down, sort of realize and let them know that it is okay to be nervous, that, you know, I’m nervous too and I’m not even going to be on the stage. “I’ll be watching you but I’m nervous for all of you as well.” Lindsay: As a director, I was the epitome of the nervous director. I’d, like, sit in the very back and I’m like, “Don’t touch me. Nobody, no, no, no. Don’t sit with me. Don’t touch me.” Craig: Well, I think nerves are a good thing. Nerves mean that you care about what you’re going to do, you care about how it’s going to come across, and I think the best counterbalance to getting too nervous is to just be prepared and to realize that you’ve already done all the work and then what you’re about to do in front of the audience is basically a celebration on exhibition of all the work that you’ve put in over the last months. Forrest: Exactly, yeah. It’s what they’ve been working for. Lindsay: Have you ever had a student who’s refused to go on stage? Forrest: No. Lindsay: Good. Forrest: I have not. But I’ve had a few close calls. Just this past play that I was directing, there was a girl that had a pretty bad nervous breakdown – she was crying and things like that – but she was able to pull it together and then she was fine for the show. But, for a moment there, I was like, “Oh, boy. Here we go.” Lindsay: Is that another situation where the students themselves can help another student kind of get over their fears? Forrest: Yeah, and what was fortunate for me is that she had a brother that was in the show as well. So, he was able to talk to her and help out. Lindsay: Let’s talk about just a couple more of the technical things such as enunciation which is my biggest thing and also students who talk too fast or who are sort of in their own heads and they are not getting that they have to communicate clearly to an audience. How do you deal with that? Forrest: Which part? All of it? Lindsay: Okay. Let’s go first with enunciation. Forrest: Enunciation, it’s just, again, those exercises. They almost do it sarcastically sometimes where, you know, I’ll give them a word or they say a word and I say, “I couldn’t understand it because you’re not enunciating the last part of it, you know, and with your Ts, and your Ds, and ‘do you understand?’” and do things like that where you’re over-exaggerating the word and they have to over-exaggerate the syllable. So, they’ll do that and they’ll do it sarcastically a lot of times but I want them to understand. And then I’ll say, “Good! That was great. Just keep doing that,” and they sort of understand that the theatre sort of swallows those sounds. And so, even though they’re on stage and they think it’s being over-exaggerated and it sounds stupid to them, us sitting out in the audience, you don’t notice at all. And so, that’s an important thing for them to learn about that. Lindsay: Do you ever videotape them and then show them? Forrest: No, I haven’t done that as much. I’ve tried it a few times and it is effective. It’s something that I don’t do as often as I should. It’s been something I’ve been thinking about doing more often just because of the accessibility of technology now that I have, you know, the teachers, everyone in our school now, all the teachers have their own iPad. So, you know, that’s something now I can bring into the theatre and just quickly videotape them and then turn around and show it and say, “This is what you look like.” And I wasn’t able to do that before. I mean, I could come in and videotape it but then it was a process where you’d have to bring them to another room and hook it up to the TV and what-not. So, I think with technology it’s going to make things a lot easier and I think it’s something that I’ll be exploring more in the future. It’s a great idea because, in their mind, they think they’re doing something that they’re not. Lindsay: Absolutely. Forrest: Yeah. Lindsay: I find that where students lose actually both articulation and their speeding up so they’ve got that one-two punch in there is when they’re right in the middle of an emotional scene, right? And they’re just being so emotional and yet all communication is lost. Have you ever had students do that? Forrest: Yeah, and a lot of it is nervousness, too. They’re so nervous that they’re just going through the lines. Because I’m a speech coach as well and the goal is, you know, we always find a piece or a cutting that is so long, let’s say it’s six minutes long, and by the end of the season, I want them up to seven minutes with the same piece. So, it’s the goal to find the pauses and to experiment, and it always works, too. It always ends up getting longer and longer and longer because they know where to slow down and where to add add effectively with those pauses. And I know that with the scripts too, you know, in Minnesota, for the competitive plays, you can’t go over thirty-five minutes or you’re disqualified in the competitions. So, I always pick a play that’s running about twenty to twenty-five minutes in length, and by the end of the show, we’re pushing thirty-five because of pauses and what-not. Lindsay: My biggest piece of advice for directors out there who are picking competition pieces is exactly that. Pick a piece that is at least ten minutes less than your cut-off time so that you never have those problems. You never have to rush, you never have to worry about audience reaction, putting them overtime. You just work the play. Forrest: Exactly. It never fails. That’s one of the things I’ve learned as a director, that your initial time, that first read-through time, it’s always going to be ten to fifteen minutes longer than that by the end. Craig: Yeah, and I was a victim of that in high school where our show went overtime and we knew that we were close and there’s nothing like that stress of being on stage and doing a show, but at the same time, seeing the director walking back and forth in the wings with the stopwatch in his hands. Everyone was just panicking and then we still went overtime. And another show, this is interesting, another show in the same festival, they were going overtime and they just stopped the show at the time limit. They just turned off the lights and ended the show. Forrest: I’ve created early out scenarios before. Craig: Who wants that though? Forrest: I know but, you know, like, if you’re cutting it so close and you don’t want to cut anything, and it’s never gotten to that point but we’ve had to run emergency cut-off scenarios where the people in the booth will be timing and they’ll do, like, some sort of light cue to signify to the actors that we have to wrap it up, quickly. Lindsay: It’s like your emergency response scenario that you have to practice at school. Forrest: And we do, we would practice it. It was actually during A Deep Poetic Journey Into Something was when we had to do that. We had to come up with emergency stops because we were starting to push the time on it. Lindsay: Okay. So, ah! You’ve done the perfect segue. So, let’s talk about that! So, you directed the first production of A Deep Poetic Journey Into Something. Forrest: Yes. Lindsay: So, what was that like, first of all, to bring your own script to life? Forrest: Well, I’ve been doing that for a long time. I think it’s been fortunate for me to be, you know, for one, I’m writing for teenagers and I’m writing for youth groups and so what perfect opportunity to be a theatre director in a high school where you can basically workshop your own work every year. And I don’t do originals every year but, when I do, I just think it’s really fortunate that I can do that. It’s definitely nerve-racking because you never know. As a writer, there’s always that self-doubt about whether or not it’s actually good or not and so you have to kind of go through that every time. But then, once you start doing the public performances and getting feedback, it becomes extremely helpful because then you can make changes and that’s the great liberty about doing your own work because you can change lines and you can do all kinds of stuff to the play that you wouldn’t necessarily be able to do if you were going to do someone else’s show. Lindsay: All right. So, just give a little brief, teeny tiny synopsis. We have your main character in your play, Jane, and she’s basically going through a crisis of self, yeah? Forrest: Yeah. She just feels like she’s sort of trapped in this box and she wants to break out of the box and be different and be cool. It’s really about she just doesn’t know who she is and we use that sort of block metaphor as sort of a vehicle throughout the show because she’s trapped in these blocks and we have shadows that signify that as well. Lindsay: Yeah. So, one of the things that you used when you were staging it was the use of shadows – you have shadow screens and then actors behind. Did you always know you wanted to use shadow screens? Forrest: Yeah. Well, I always wanted to do a play with shadows because it had started with, at one point, I directed the one-act play, The Veldt by Ray Bradbury, and we had a rear projection on that because, if you’re familiar with that play or not, it takes place in this room that’s computerized so it creates these sort of living pictures on the wall. And so, we used rear projection to do that and we have a scene where they were arguing behind the screen and the father, as he’s yelling at the kids, he gets bigger and bigger and bigger with the shadow, and then the kids got smaller and smaller and smaller. And, ever since that scene, then was like, “I would love to do a show where I can do even more of that,” and it just sort of happened to fit in with the other ideas that I was having. Lindsay: So, how did you direct your students to act behind a shadow screen? Forrest: Oh, that was tough. We started right away. We had the shadow screens right away and it was a lot of just experimentation about what can we make for images and what can we do, and they had to understand how to move with the light because, if you move closer to the light, you get bigger, and if you move further away from the light, you get smaller. We’d have kids that would move behind the curtain and then other kids would come out in front and watch it so they could understand – if I’m standing here, this is what I look like. It’s just a lot of experimentation in the beginning because I didn’t even know some of the images that I was going to use and so it all kind of came through the rehearsal process. Craig: Technical question! Did you build these screens yourself? Lindsay: That was my question! Forrest: Yeah, I did. It was actually pretty easy. It was just muslin. I bought muslin and had someone sew – they hung on bars, PVC pipe, that’s all I made, and made stands out of PVC pipe and hung them up. It was really easy to make. Lindsay: So, basically, did you just make a frame of PVC and then hung the muslin on the pipes like that? Forrest: Yeah, the top of the muslin, they had sewn a pocket. Lindsay: A sleeve. Forrest: Yeah, a sleeve. Thank you. Lindsay: Yeah. Forrest: And we were able to slip through the bar, and I had three screens and it basically covered the entire stage. And, yeah, it was three squares and they were eight by eight. Lindsay: Each square was eight by eight? Forrest: Yeah. Lindsay: What light did you use? Craig: Affordable as heck, right? Forrest: Yup! I had PAR cans. I just had three PARs and just set them in the back and that was it. I built these little wooden triangles that they could sit on so that they slanted up and they kind of shot up towards because I found that, if it was shooting straight forward, it was actually shooting, the lights were so strong it was shooting through the fabric and right into the audience and that was uncomfortable for people that would be sitting in the audience. So, I had to put them on the floor and then I shot them up at a 45-degree angle. Lindsay: Do you think that, because it seems like you do a lot of trial-and-error with your work, do you think that sort of leads into your students’ understanding about really what the rehearsal process is all about? That they know that you have to try and fail and try and fail? Forrest: Yeah, and they get used to that. It’s always funny with the new kids that come in because, you know, I’ll set the initial blocking and then I’ll change something and then they’ll look at the script and they’ll say, “Yeah, but you had me moving here and doing this,” and I say, “Well, yes, but now I’m changing it.” It’s funny that it happened the other day and one of the older students sort of looked at her and commented, “Get used to it,” because they all knew that that’s what happens. So, they just get used to my method, I guess. Lindsay: So, we’re actually coming up to the end of our time and I wanted to talk about you writing for students. Is that something that you just, did you fall into it because you’re a teacher and you were frustrated with plays? Have you always been a writer? Why is it that you write for teens? Forrest: Well, you hit it on the head right there. I was so frustrated with, when I first started finding scripts that teenagers could do, and I used to have the philosophy that, “Why should students be doing plays about adults when they have no understanding of what it means to be in that situation or to be an adult to begin with?” Lindsay: That’s always been my philosophy, too. Forrest: And so, I wanted to find more and more plays that could deal with that and it just, I don’t know if it was me or what, but I just felt like there was nothing out there, and then if it was, it was so select. So, I just decided, and I’ve been writing all my life anyway so I just decided that I would tailor or just start writing stuff that would tailor the kids’ needs and that would be about teenagers. Lindsay: And so, where did A Deep Poetic Journey Into Something come from? Forrest: It was a mixture of images and ideas. Basically, the idea of wanting to do a shadow play and then the idea of a teenager struggling with self-identity or trying to figure out who they were and, you know, it’s just a combination of things. There were so many things that went into creating that play, it was like ten different things came from all over that kind of created that show. Lindsay: And you just sort of harnessed it? Forrest: Yeah, pretty much. That play was definitely an interesting process about how it got created. And then, once I cast it, I mean, I didn’t even know who was going to play the main character and then once I picked our lead character, then I actually started changing the script more to tailor her and what she could do. One of the great things is I found out that she could cry on command so there was the scene where her father dies and it was a pretty powerful scene because she could make it work. Lindsay: What was the audience response? Forrest: There was a lot of sniffling, yeah, yeah. It was great. A lot of sniffling in the audience because they could identify with her emotionally and there were a lot of teenagers, I got so many compliments from that show from teens that identified with her, and she got a lot of compliments too – kids coming up that she didn’t even know that said, you know, “You were so great and it reminds me of me so much.” I was fortunate enough that play made it to the state competition in Minnesota when I did it and I got emails from students afterwards. So, it really resonated a lot with kids and I’ve never had a reaction like that before. There’s something about that play, I think, that just sort of tapped into how they feel. Lindsay: Well, that’s the mark, I think, of a really great youth play is that, when you are hearing from the students themselves. I always know that it’s a tricky line because we write stuff that has to resonate both with teachers and with students because it’s the teachers who, you know, buy the plays. But when you can get a student who says, “I want to do this play,” and, really, it’s a real mark of pride for me. Forrest: Yeah, it was a big accomplishment. It’s actually one of my favorite shows that I’ve written from a personal standpoint. I’m glad you took it. Lindsay: Yeah, I was just about to say we’re glad to have it! It’s awesome! What do you think, Craig? Craig: I think that’s good. What I’m thinking right now is I’m so glad that Forrest made it. Lindsay: Yes! Forrest: Yes, I am too. I was getting worried there for a while. Craig: You were? Lindsay: I was like, “All right, vamp for forty-five minutes, all right, here we go! Put on my tap shoes!” All right! Thank you everyone for joining and thank you so much for your questions! I think that we are going to, we liked seeing what you guys need and what you guys are asking and that means that we can take it and, you know, do things with it and hopefully, you know, make your lives a little bit easier. And, all right, go out and enjoy the rest of your Saturday! I’m out, Lindsay Price. How about you, Craig?

At a recent conference middle school teacher Adam Moreno from the University School of Milwaukee shared with me how he uses Agatha Rex in the classroom: students work on, self-direct, and present the same scenes from the play on their own. I knew that these would be a great project to share. You have three different classes using a scene from one of our plays AGATHA REX. Why did you choose this particular scene?First off, I use Agatha Rex because it’s a strong introduction to some great aspects of Greek Theatre, especially the use of the Greek Chorus. I also use the theme of right and wrong to have in depth conversations with the students about ethics. The students struggle with the ideas of equal punishment, breaking the rules, and standing up for what you feel is right. Agatha Rex has valuable lessons that students need to learn and discuss. The end of the first act and the end of the second act are particularly strong scenes for the students to work on as an ensemble because of the use of the Greek Chorus. Everyone, with the exception of Agatha, speaks together. This takes the focus off of what each individual student is doing and focuses their energy on how the group says the lines and how the group moves on stage as an ensemble. The result is some awesome collaborative work! What are the expectations for the presented scene?I break acting down into two elements for my middle school actors: physicality (movement on stage) and expression (variations is voice). When the students begin, I emphasis the need to use the whole stage, to stay open to the audience, and to change levels. I also remind them that, even though they are speaking together, they need to convey emotion through their unison voice. We also talk quite a bit leading up to this project about the importance of “background” or “secondary” acting. What are you doing on stage, when you’re not saying a line. I love watching the creative ideas they come up with about who their characters are and what they are doing in each scene. Each of the classes must prepare and perform the scene on their own.

As teachers we share a lot with our students – from lessons to life skills. We recently asked drama teachers: What is the one thing I never want my students to forget? • It is ok to be different. – Adam H. • The importance of LISTENING! – Janette G. • That they are capable of doing so much more than they realise (if they just have faith in themselves)!! – Jade K. • If it’s not your prop, don’t touch it! – Pam W. • EMPATHY! – Cate B. • To work as a team and at the same time DO YOUR JOB (don’t worry about someone else’s job). – Caitlin G. • United we stand; divided we fall. Let’s give them the best damn show of all. Give em hell! – Cris M. • To stop learning and growing is the real death of a human being, and the only one we should be afraid of. – Rob T. • There are no small parts, only small actors. – Johnnie M. • To know what it feels like to be an Artist. – Sarah I. • Breathe! – Michael F. • Leave it better than you found it. – Greg H. • Theatre is a team sport (there is no “i” in either cast or crew), except that there is no second string, only the first string, so the show must always go on no matter what. – JR S. • Never stop questioning. – Jared L. • Their lines and cues. :) – Haley S. • You can learn something from every production you see, even if it’s what not to do. – Patricia R. • Don’t surrender to fear. Feel it, but do it in spite of the fear!! – Maggie H. • DON’T CHEW GUM ONSTAGE! – Wendy P. • Show Respect. – Glori A. • You can never use too much glow tape! – Chris B. • To do the right thing…. Even if it means making a tough choice… – Rassika R. • Less is more sometimes. And all of the above ones as well! – Susan R. • Theatre matters. – James F. • You can change people’s lives with what you do on stage (and off). – Linda B. • Have fun! – Andrea P. • The show must go on…. – Christina D. • Process. – Roger M. • Pay attention. Pay attention to how you feel. Use it. Pay attention to the world around you. And pay attention to the scene, really listen. – Rena M. • To have fun…because if you aren’t having fun it’s not worth doing! – Amy M. • “The zest for and love of life theatre folk have! – Gary S. • Find inspiration in all life’s moments whether big or small, happy or sad, failure or success. – Brandi W. • Passion. – Matt N. • Every role is important, even when you’re standing still. Be in the moment. – Gwen A. • It’s okay to make a mistake. – Patrick B. • Learn to give up control. Be okay with just being still. Accept uncertainty within the work and self. – Matthew B. • Even when you think life is too hard, there is someone in theatre who loves you. – Garrard County H.S.T.D. • You can be great. It’s all up to you. – Lonnie R. • Listen, react, respond. – Bill A.