Colorado Academic Standards - Drama and Theatre Arts
Eighth Grade

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.

This mini-course will give you a toolkit to bring your shows to the next level by having an engaged, active, ensemble. The ensemble is a critical part of a large cast show. But you can't leave them to fend for themselves. They need structure. They need exercises and activities. In Strong Ensemble = Strong Play, you'll be given ensemble-building exercises. You'll also discover specific activities that will help your ensemble become three-dimensional characters who have something to do and something to play in every moment they are on stage. We'll look at case studies that take the exercises learned in the course and apply them to specific shows.

In "Working With Monologues For Rehearsal And Development" you will develop ten sessions of study on monologues. The study contains the definition and history of the monologue; monologue vocabulary; analysis of a practice monologue, staging a short monologue; working with musical theatre lyrics as a monologue; writing short autobiographical monologues. At the end of this course, you will have a curriculum which can be used as introduction to monologue work.

Learn about the Laban system to teach your students to physically and vocally discover character. This is an advanced course, which means that the course goes deep into exploring character and exploring character work through the work of Rudolph Laban.

Gai Jones will help you establish an ensemble-based environment from the first day of class or rehearsal. Learn how to set up your ensemble-based classroom from day one, get students to set classroom norms, and find the balance between creative activity and structure. You’ll learn how to give your students creative freedom through structure and classroom management. The cornerstone of this course are the detailed ensemble experiences from large group to small group and even individual experiences. This course culminates in a devising model that you can use with your students, and takes you through process, product, performance and an evaluation. You too can create the ensemble-based classroom.

Allison Williams leads the course: 21st Century Skills Through Devising. This course covers what devising is, why to do it, how to do it, and how your students can master the 21st Century Skills of collaborations and cooperation, critical thinking, creative thinking through devising. High school is a great place to try devising with your students. But it’s not something you want to throw at your students without any preparation. Framework is important and this course takes you through a number of exercises you can take into the classroom tomorrow to help build a place of physical safety, a place where students work at making a lot of choices instead of waiting for the perfect choice, and a place where students feel comfortable making creative choices. The material also reviews the process of putting together a show from the idea/research stage to editing, to giving feedback. Your students have what it takes to create their own material, collaborate with each other, and have a unique theatrical experience!

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.

The two big questions we’re going to answer in this course are: What is feedback? And, What is useful feedback? Now, if you asked a hundred people to answer these two questions, you’ll likely get a hundred different answers, but at its core, all the answers will focus on giving notes that will improve the work, which, in this case, is our student’s plays. And, as a teacher, that’s what your hope is, right? To help your students improve as writers, one work at a time. We want our students to write, and to grow through their writing. If we want our students to get better, we need to get better. Understanding the definition of feedback, and understanding how to provide useful feedback is the key to all of us getting better. Join Nick Pappas in this course designed to give you the tools to help your student writers find their voice.

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.

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.