PD COURSE
Director's Toolbox 2: Teaching Students to Direct
by James Van Leishout
Director’s Toolbox 2: Teaching Students to Direct, explores the tools of the actor, rehearsal, space, and design.
The tool of the actor will focus on creating a safe place to play, auditions, and how to communicate with actors.
Rehearsals will look at the whole process from the first meeting to opening night.
The tool of space will explore how to direct in different spaces and how to create focus through stage composition.
Discover how an understanding of the elements of design help student-directors communicate with designers. The final step is a return to self and the mastery of self evaluation.
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PD COURSE
Practical Approaches to Shakespeare in the Drama Classroom
by Julie Hartley
Shakespeare is one of the greatest resources a drama teacher can have: scenes packed with action; opportunities to explore comedy and physical theatre; rich themes and characters to act as springboards for devised theatre; the chance to work with our language at its finest and – most importantly – ideas that relate directly to the experiences and preoccupations of students.
Yet Shakespeare isn’t easy. The language can seem dense, and finding a way in can be tough – especially for drama teachers who have not themselves studied Shakespeare. That’s the goal of this course – to help teachers find a way in.
This course presents teachers with as many ways in to the exploration of Shakespeare as possible. Action scenes, themes, characters, different theatre styles, and devised theatre projects. Students will be armed with the tools they need to begin individually exploring monologues, or working together on scenes.
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PD COURSE
Play Adaptation Project
by Lindsay Price
Adaptation is a fabulous classroom project: it requires students to analyze, adapt, modify, plan synthesize, devise. All the higher order thinking skills.
But you can’t just throw a narrator into a script and call it a day. You have to have a preparation process leading up to the writing process.
In this course you will learn practical exercises and a path to prepare your students to take on their own adaptation project. We’ll look at the guidelines to adaptation, things to think about when choosing a text, how to analyze the source material and writing that first draft.
So join me, Lindsay Price, in the Play Adaptation Project.
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PD COURSE
Get Students to Embrace Failure in the Drama Classroom
by Lindsay Price
This course by Lindsay Price explores strategies you can use to encourage students to embrace failure rather than see it as a point of shame or something to hide from.
Our goal for students is to embrace a try/fail/try again/fail/try again/succeed formula. Each module in this course comes with exercises and activities that you’ll be able to take into the classroom right away.
It’s one thing to talk about embracing failure, it’s another to give students practical tools to help them achieve that goal. Join Lindsay in getting students to embrace failure in the drama classroom as we look at Failure from a Yes! perspective.
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PD COURSE
Exploring Viewpoints
by Erin Carr
Viewpoints is used to create dynamic moments of theatre by simply existing on the stage. However, Viewpoints is more than just an acting technique to understand your own physicality and more than a directing technique to create “ah-ha!” moments on stage. It is first and foremost the philosophy that to create an organic performance, you must see obstacle as opportunity, and that by simply standing in space, your creativity can spark.
This course by Erin Carr will help your students discover fresh impulses that motivate their performance in the moment. We will go through the Viewpoints technique, as created by Mary Overlie, and learn how to tap into kinesthetic awareness as individuals and as an ensemble. Through this style of play, students learn to release their thoughts on what they “should” do, and instead just respond organically to their surroundings and ensemble!
We’re going to break down each of the Viewpoints, there’s lots of visual demonstration, so you can see each Viewpoint in action, and I’m going to provide tips and side coaching examples.
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PD COURSE
Soft Skills, The Tangible Value of the Drama Curriculum
by Matt Webster
This course is about the fact that so-called soft skills are sought after and highly valued in professional work environments, educational settings, and in everyday social interactions. They're valuable life skills, but we can't always identify these skills within a standard educational setting, and yet, they are incredibly useful in education and beyond. That's why it's important to be able to identify these soft skills in the classroom and in the educational process and to recognize that these soft skills are being taught every day in the drama curriculum. We need to concentrate our efforts into making sure that these skills are identified and utilized within our classrooms. They are built into every arts curriculum a school offers, especially the theater arts.
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PD COURSE
SEL Through the Lens of Theatre
by Christa Vogt
SEL stands for Social Emotional Learning. Theatre teachers know that Social Emotional Learning and its categories: Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, Relationship Skills and Responsible Decision Making, are innate in what we do.
The goal of this mini-course is to show you that you can take SEL in the way that your administration wants you to, using the language they want you to use, and apply it to lessons you already teach.
Instructor Christa Vogt will take you through the facets of SEL, and then take you step by step through an activity - to show you how you can apply SEL to each and every step.
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PD COURSE
Blood, Blisters & Bruises
by Matt Webster
Welcome to Blood, Blisters, and Bruises. This is an introductory course to learn how to use makeup to create scars, blisters, and bruises with a little blood on the side, and a special bonus section on creating zombies. You’re going to learn the techniques and materials you will need to do these special effects, and how to teach your students to do these special effects.
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PD COURSE
Organized Chaos: 2nd Edition
by Matt Webster
Organized Chaos: Discipline in the Theatre Classroom will give you tools and strategies to prepare you for challenges you may face as you step up in front of a class of students and introduce them to the art of theatre.
Whether you are a student teacher finishing college, a first-year teacher just starting out in the classroom, or an established teacher with a few years of experience under your belt, these lessons will provide insight and support as you establish discipline in your classroom.
This is a revised, 2nd edition of a favourite original course in the DTA, brought to you by experienced theatre educator, Matt Webster.
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PD COURSE
Playwriting Outside the Lines
by Steven Stack
Instructor Steven Stack leads this course in a unique way to teach playwriting. He will show you how to set foundations and guide posts for your students, and then give them freedom to play. The intent is to help students develop their own voice and create for creating sake. The 5 modules lead teachers through how to use this style of teaching playwriting, and includes handouts and resources to support the learning.
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PD COURSE
Introduction to Teaching Mask: 2nd Edition
by Allison Williams
In Introduction to Teaching Mask: 2nd Edition, Allison Williams gives you a toolkit of mask and movement exercises to teach students to make big, confident physical choices, to work in their bodies, and play different characters - masked and unmasked.
By working through the exercises in this course, you, the teacher, will also gain an understanding of basic physical acting and learn some easy specific tools to coach your students – not just in mask, but in all their performance work.
Access to masks is required, but previous experience with masks is not.
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PD COURSE
Screenplays 101 - Part 1: Basic Structure
by Nicholas Pappas
Screenwriter Nick Pappas leads a two-part course on screenplays 101. Great scriptwriting is not something that can be covered in a single course: so we're going to start with the basics. Those basics are going to be split up into a Part 1 and a Part 2. Part 1, this course, will concentrate on basic film structure. Part 2 will concentrate on screenplay formatting.
By the end of this course, students should have a basic understanding of history, terminology, and are able to identify the barest bones of the three-act structure, all with an eye toward developing their own screenplay.
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PD COURSE
Screenplays 101 - Part 2: Basic Formatting
by Nicholas Pappas
This course is a Part 2. In a Screenplays 101 course, screenwriter Nick Pappas covers both Structure and Formatting. Here in Part 2 we'll cover Basic Formatting. If you have not already watched Screenplays 101 – Part 1: Basic Structure, I highly recommend you go back and do so now. Having that knowledge under your belt will help you navigate Part 2 of this course.
The goal is that, by the end of this course, your students have a basic understanding of how a screenplay is formatted and why it is formatted that way, all with an eye toward developing their own screenplay.
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PD COURSE
Tech Knowledge: Integrating Tech Throughout Your Rehearsal Process
by Claire Broome
This course will help you integrate technical theatre earlier in the creative process to help reduce the stress of tech week, and make sure you have what you need before choosing a show. We will explore how to include your technical theatre team from day one and will help you have an easier experience throughout the rehearsal process and final performances.
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PD COURSE
From Audition to Curtain Call: Directing Youth Theatre
by Steven Stack
Directing youth theatre can be one of the most thrilling, rewarding, and exhausting jobs there is – because it’s not just about staging a play. It’s about creating an environment that fosters hard work, dedication, trust, and the willingness to take chances, to “play without fear.”
As a writer/teacher/director of youth theatre for over 15 years, I have developed tools and strategies that enable my students and me to focus on the process of creating theatre while fostering an environment that leads to creative freedom and a cohesive groups that doesn't act as individual “stars,” but as a community of one.
In this course, I will share with you these tips and strategies, along with the ways to implement them in your theatre environment.
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PD COURSE
Friendly Shakespeare
by Todd Espeland
Friendly Shakespeare teaches a simple and effective method of script analysis for Shakespeare. It uses punctuation and keywords in the text to help students understand the characters' needs, make specific acting choices, and get them on their feet immediately.
This is not dry, sitting in a classroom discussion. It’s physicalizing the text, focusing on the character’s needs and tactics (something every drama student should know full well) and bringing Shakespeare to life.
At the end of the class you will be able to demystify Shakespeare's text and understand how to help your actors make clear, active and emotionally connected choices in Shakespeare's plays.
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PD COURSE
Hands-On Theatre History: Creating a Modern Day Morality Play
by Wendy-Marie Martin
Who says theatre history has to be boring? Hands-On Theatre History: Creating a Modern Day Morality play is an interactive course by Wendy-Marie Martin, combining hands-on activities with research and analysis techniques leading to a full performance of the popular medieval morality play, Everyman.
This course gives students an overview of the medieval period and the various medieval play forms and teaches students the key points of storytelling and adaptation.
It includes dynamic individual and group exercises leading students from the first steps of the adaptation process through a final, full-class performance of Everyman—and proves, once and for all, that theatre history can be fun and exciting to learn.
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PD COURSE
Mindfulness & Wellness in the Drama Classroom
by Claire Broome
In this course, instructor Claire Broome shares what mindfulness is, and why it is so important in the Drama Classroom. The course covers how mindfulness and wellness can help both students and teachers.
Claire discusses how to prepare students for this kind of learning, and provides various activities to bring into your classroom, as well as a variety of extensions for these activities that can be applied to character creation and possible projects.
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PD COURSE
The Dilemma Project
by Claire Broome
Moral dilemmas are not only faced by characters in gripping plays, but are also faced by our students. The project outlined in this course will help students develop their critical thinking skills through the use of one of the dilemma questions to shape a student written production.
If you had the choice to press a button and earn $25,000,000... but a species (not of your choosing) would become extinct, what would you do? More importantly, what would your character do?
Join drama teacher and playwright Claire Broome through this course which includes role-playing, Stanislavski’s Magic If, character creation, playwriting and staging.
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PD COURSE
Approaching Drama Class with an Indigenous Perspective
by Allison Green
This course is led by Allison Green, a member of the Algonquin Band of Mattawa, and a drama and social sciences teacher in Northern Ontario, Canada. She believes that drama teachers should look at their teaching through an Indigenous lens for a few reasons:
- It is time in North America to take a conscientious look at Indigenous people’s approach to learning and teaching.
- For our Indigenous students, it’s important to see themselves in materials, activities, and classroom routines.
- It is also valuable for our non-Indigenous students to see and better understand the diverse nature of the creative process and ways of seeing our world through this lens.
This course aims to help teachers see their drama class through an Indigenous lens - by exploring the learning circle, culturally responsive approaches, and Indigenous pedagogy.
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