First Line Hurdle: Exercise & Reflection

WOW!!! I always enjoy your newsletters, but the Death of a Salesman analysis, questions and activities has been my absolute favorite so far! Thank you so much for this in-depth look at a play I am teaching next quarter. I will be using most of your newsletter in my class. I love the discussion questions, activities, all of it! Thank you so much for your help - it can be hard to teach the same plays year after year and make them exciting, no matter how good they are, and it is so helpful to get something new. I'm looking forward to the next months' newsletters, as I have taught all of the "big 3" Miller plays at some point in my theatre teacher career. So thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

Hi Lindsay, I have just come back from my drama group performing Hoodie as part of a one act play festival competition. I have no idea if they will receive any awards yet and I really don't care because I am just so happy with how they worked as an ensemble and the excellent feedback from the adjudicator and the audience members. People loved your script and it was absolutely perfect for our group of 11 - 13 year olds. With a 'Clump' that ended up only having 6 members, I wasn't sure how it would go but the great part about your script is that the lines can be delegated to as many or as few people as possible. I also had to make a couple of changes as to who played each role (things like my Woman 3 suddenly becoming unavailable and me then having to give those roles to the other 'Women') but the play is so flexible it worked perfectly! I wanted my Hoodie character to be a strong performer but then felt this role was a bit small and so I cast him as Jonas too and WOW! the change in his two characters was outstanding. Anyway I really just wanted to say thank you so, so much for a brilliant script and I will try and send you some photos as soon as possible! We really appreciated the opportunity to perform your wonderful play.

The cast for Canterbury Tales is composed of 4 native English speakers and 4 English Language Learners (all have high proficiency in English).We are very excited to deal with such a 21st century theatre company! The ability to preview and purchase digitally is an amazing thing for us here in Ecuador! The ability to purchase video production rights is also a very big deal for us. It is not common with most of our shows and a disappointment to all of the international family members that can't see our performances live.