Welcome to our Featured Play Spotlight. Middle school: a wild mix of excitement, nerves, and really big eighth graders. With a large cast and relatable characters, School Daze by Lindsay Price is an ideal choice for middle school performers navigating their first day of school.
You remember middle school. That first day can be a funhouse or a hall of horrors. Will I fit in or be left behind? Did I wear the right clothes? How will I find the right class? Why do those eighth graders look so big...
Middle school is the tricky tightrope between being a kid and being a teenager. How did you fare? Did you fall off the tightrope? Did you hold on?
See the characters in School Daze try to keep their balance on the first day of middle school.
Let's hear from the author!
When I’m writing or thinking about writing, my number one method of finding play ideas is observation. Looking at what’s happening around me, listening to conversations, and most importantly, listening to my customers and my audience. Before writing School Daze, I had only written plays for high school students and never considered middle school. After a trip to a conference in Texas, I met so many middle school drama teachers who were looking specifically for plays written for middle school performers and dealing with middle school issues. And the big thing they told me middle school students didn’t want was fairy tales or similar childish stories. I took on the challenge and this play was actually the first of many middle school pieces.
Middle school is a tricky tightrope. How do you manage the first day successfully?
I love the image of Sam and Pat standing with cafeteria trays trying to figure out how to navigate this new world.
Avoid blackouts. Blackouts take the audience out of the world of the play and if you have one after every scene, the play is going to feel quite choppy. Using staging and music to move from scene to scene. Keep scene changes to a minimum and focus on keeping the play moving!
I’m thrilled at how schools respond to this play. Some schools present it year after year to their feeder schools as an introduction to Middle School. And because it’s in the vignette format, it’s easy to rehearse with a large cast because you can have several scenes practicing at once. Perfect for Middle School classrooms.
I love the race scene because it takes a typical middle school event, moving from class to class, to the extreme. It also gives actors a lot to play with — there’s the humour of the characters and the physical action of the slow motion running. Every time I’ve ever seen the play, this scene has always been a highlight.
"Everyone at my old school hates Skinny Marie and I know, I just know, she's going to try and be my friend because we're the only ones who know each other."