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In this lesson, students will explore how to make their own Broadway musical through improvisation. Broadway musicals like The Book of Mormon, Urinetown, and Forbidden Broadway were developed from improvised work. Students will learn how to improvise an original musical in front of an audience. There are excellent opportunities for both the singer and non-singer who wants to explore improv like never before. This is also a great opportunity for singers to become far more confident with their performances. There are hands-on activities for students at all levels.

This lesson looks at the historical and cultural context of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

This lesson focuses on symbolism by investigating The Manifesto of Symbolism by Jean Moreas to help inspire students to write their own short manifestos.

This lesson introduces the characteristics of Dadaism, through Ubu Roi, Dadaism manifestos, Voltaire, and Dada art. Students will learn how to write a Dada poem of their own.

This lesson looks at Breton's Manifesto of Surrealism, Atraud's Theatre of Cruelty, and the game of Exquisite Corpse. Students will create their own short surrealist play.

This lesson investigates expressionist theatre and compare to the other movements discussed thus far. Using O'Neill's The Hairy Ape, students will conduct deep analysis on a scene.

This lesson enters the last and final -ism for the unit, with a focus on five iconic absurdist playwrights: Beckett, Ionesco, Genet, Pinter, and Albee.

This project combines creativity with analytical thought as students connect ideas and concepts with their imagination in order to create a theme park that embodies all five of the “isms” we’ve covered: symbolism, Dadaism, surrealism, expressionism, and absurdism.

This lesson aims to encourage students to take risks and allay fear.

This lesson encourages students to embrace failure as a positive aspect rather than negative.

This lesson allows students to practice and apply attributes of confidence.

This lesson has students identify and have self-awareness of positive and negative speak.

Students will learn to break free of academia’s stringent MLA formatting and “proper” speech patterns, while recognizing their own code-switching, to capture authentic and natural rhythms to match the speech patterns of their friends, families, and community.

Students will build upon the Overheard Dialogue lesson to write a first draft of an authentic, decolonized monologue that speaks to their interests and voice.

Students will use a workshop process to build upon the first draft of their monologue and write a second, stronger draft of their monologue.

During this lesson, students will explore how the five senses can be used by actors as a technique to create a character.

During this lesson, the student will perform open scenes to practice using multiple tactics to achieve the character’s objectives in a scene.

During this lesson, students are challenged to devise interesting characters by creating a character history and then using that information in a character improv. This exercise will allow students to practice a portion of the necessary work to build a multi-dimensional character.

In this lesson, students will use the act of entering and exiting a scene in character to demonstrate character choice.

In this culminating exercise, students will prepare a scene using what they have learned throughout the unit.