The Scene: May 27th, 2022
In today's email: get funding, support, and make an impact on your school district!
First up:
This week was hard. It can feel frivolous to talk about theatre when the nation is hurting. But we wanted to take a moment to spotlight some hope in the way theatre can help transform our world.
#ENOUGH: Plays to End Gun Violence is a scriptwriting program that calls on teenagers to confront gun violence by creating new works of theatre that will spark critical conversations and inspire meaningful action in communities across the country.
In their own words:
#ENOUGH is about youth engagement
#ENOUGH is about youth-led creativity
And, above all, #ENOUGH is about youth-driven action
This April, on the 23rd anniversary of the Columbine shootings, eight short new theatrical works by young writers from across the country were presented in a ground-breaking series of simultaneously staged readings in multiple cities on the same evening.
Our youth are saying enough is enough. And they’re taking action on the streets, on the floor of the Senate, and on the stage. It’s inspiring, it’s heartbreaking, and it’s moving. This is what theatre is all about.
The anthology of the seven winning plays from 2020 is published through Playscripts and is available for purchase here.
Also in today’s email:
Hot Topics: Switch things up in the classroom! Teachers Pay Teachers resources for drama and theatre educators and more
Teacher Feature: Howard M. Whitmore (a can-do kinda man!)
The Broadway Beat: Mrs. Doubtfire closes on Broadway, A Strange Loop Tiny Desk Concert, and New York Drama Critics’ Circle award winners
Shows You Should Know: Start your planning for next year’s competition season!
Around the Globe: Visiting London’s West End, The Laramie Project’s 22nd anniversary, 7 steps to win a Thespy (you know you wanna)
THEATRE MATTERS: or How to convince your administration to support you
By Janie Slavens (she/her/hers)
These past two years have been extremely challenging in the world of education. One of the clearest fallouts of the lost in-person instruction seems to be found in literacy skills. According to an article in EdSource by Karen D’Sousa, “reading fluency in second and third graders fell about 30% behind the usual benchmark in a study comparing data from fall 2020 with fall 2019.” Kids need as much exposure to literacy skills as possible: reading, writing, speaking, and listening. As a theatre teacher, these skills are core to your classroom. Let’s look at some ways you can deeper their use and help get students back on track.
Challenge yourself to include all four literacy skills in every lesson. Are your students working on a scene study assignment? Great! They are actively engaged in reading, speaking, and listening. You can task them with writing internal dialogue for their character, writing what they think might happen after the scene, or writing a self-reflection on their work in class that day. Are you students doing a set design project? Terrific! They can pair up and take their partner on a tour of their proposed set, engaging in speaking and listening. Are your students working on a unit about improv? See if you can incorporate written lines of dialogue so they are practicing their reading aloud skills.
Focus deeply on one skill at a time. Listening is one of the most important tools in an actor’s world. But do your students truly know how to listen? Try experimenting with interviewing. Students can take turns in the hot seat as a character in a play you are reading or scene you are working on, answering questions from their perspective. Or have students interview important folks in their lives, sharing their stories with the class when they come back. Take time to listen to the silent environment around you, naming all the sounds that we block out. For writing, you can ask your students to write pitches to direct a scene for their peers. They can take several class periods to translate a Shakespearean (or other!) scene into modern language. For speaking, well…I imagine you have many class periods focused mainly on speaking. If you are teaching a class in tech theatre or theatre history, can you include oral presentations as part of a final project? For reading, script analysis is a wonderful tool that connects beautifully with annotation skills for Language Arts. Have your students do a deep dive on a script and share their work in small groups.
Find ways to incorporate non-theatrical texts. Don’t let plays be the final word in your curriculum. Can your students engage with poetry? They can use poems as a vocal exercise, learn about choral reading, or create an original scene inspired by a poem. Can your students use a news article to create devised theatre around a social issue, current event, or historical moment? Use the interviews students created in their previous projects to practice listening skills and use them as the text for monologues. Children’s picture books are rich with inspiration for dramatization at all ages: high schoolers can revisit old favorites through a new lens, middle school students can design sets and costumes inspired by the illustrations, and grade school students can find the beginning, middle, and ending of the story through tableau exploration, etc.
Go see a show! You can do this in person or online. Broadway On Demand has a rich library of performances to introduce to your students if traveling to the theatre is out of your reach. Have your students read background information about the play, company, and/or dramaturgy before your students see it. Ask them to write down questions about the production you’re going to watch. After they see it, they can answer their own questions or trade with a friend. Have students discuss the play in small groups at a clear place to pause in the middle: what do they think is going to happen? Form those same groups again when it is finished and see if your guesses were correct. This activity engages in both speaking and listening. Boom. You’ve just introduced your students to professional live theatre through a literacy lens without leaving your classroom.
Have a Big Idea to share? Submit it here!
They Promised Her the Moon by Laurel Ollstein (6-18 actors possible: 3-15 W, 3-12 M)
The first American woman to test for space flight, Jerrie Cobb steps into an isolation tank for a record-breaking nine hours as her memories unfold before her, from learning to fly a plane as a child in Oklahoma to testifying in Congressional hearings about the under-the-radar all-female Mercury 13 space program. They Promised Her the Moon is a compelling drama about the challenges of sisterhood and fighting for the greater good, based on a true story.
If your theatre could perform any play currently on Broadway, what would it be?
Mrs. Doubtfire [VOTE]
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child [VOTE]
Moulin Rouge [VOTE]
Paradise Square [VOTE]
See the full poll and results here.
FREE lesson plans and training for your student actors: Teachers Pay Teachers has a drama section with materials made by educators like you.
Build a Creature (or at least rent one): Custom creature design and fabrication rentals for plays and musicals that have a creature feature—like Little Shop of Horrors.
Are they cutting your program? Changed for the Better: the value of arts in education discusses why schools shouldn’t cut arts programming.
VOTE for your favorite shows! The Theatre Fans' Choice Awards are the biggest New York Theatre Awards, where YOU, the fans, get to have your say.
Now THIS is how you reveal your upcoming season to your students
Celebrate theatre teachers everywhere! Each week, The Scene spotlights one outstanding educator and shares their best advice to fellow teachers.
Howard M. Whitmore (he/him)—A Can-Do Man!
School: Long Branch Middle School (Long Branch, NJ)
Number of years teaching: 19 years
Show you loved directing: Once On This Island has always been my favorite show to direct time and time again. Between the full version and the “junior” version written for younger performers, I have worked on at least 7 variations of this story, and I find something new to love every single time I revisit the script. On the surface, it is about discrimination both through colorism and classism, but at its core, OOTI touches on the strength of family, the power of love, and how one small person can change the world through their faith. Once On This Island was actually the first show I ever got to direct in NJ back in 2001. I had been in love with it since its original Broadway run, so it felt so natural for that to be my initial foray into directing. I get to take this journey again this fall at Cranford Dramatic Club, and I am thrilled.
Show you are dying to direct: This is a hard one because there are so many and each has its own special reason! (I actually created a list on my phone years ago, but every time I knock one off something new comes out and I add two more.) The Color Purple stands out for me because I always love a story about growth. Besides an amazing score, the book explores fully realized characters who all have realistic layers of humanity that resonate with my own experiences and those of so many others in the black and LGBTQ+ communities. In a lifetime often defined by a series of traumas, Celie, Shug Avery, and even Mister still find moments of joy in some of the darkest of times and learn to love and value themselves in the process. It is something so many of us have to learn: to love ourselves.
What’s the best piece of advice you would share with other teachers?: Never underestimate anyone and practice does NOT make perfect. This goes for not only your students but yourselves. I remind my classes at least once a year that we are harder on ourselves than we ever could be toward anyone else; we spot all of our flaws and know all of our weaknesses. Too often, we let that defeat us and wallow in what we “cannot do” either because there’s not enough money in the budget, not enough time, not enough skill…we paint ourselves into a corner of “not enough” and lower our expectations. Keep your bar high, but sometimes the “flaws” are just what make something perfect, and there are always ways to get to where you want to be, it just may be on a different path than the one you had planned. That one kid may never perfectly nail the solo and sound like the recording, but they found courage they didn’t have two months ago, took a chance, and laid it all out there in front of an audience that only wants to show them love. That set you built with your students and parents and even other teachers may not look like the Broadway model you had in your vision, but the team that you built putting it all together will remember and value that time you gave them for the rest of their lives.
Do you have advice to share with fellow theatre educators? Submit your Teacher Feature here!
Mrs. Doubtfire is closing on Broadway—will it be available to license for performances soon?
Could this be Six’s “little sister?” Fantastically Great Women Who Changed the World—Coming soon to the US.
The New York Drama Critics' Circle met on May 12 to announce the winners of the 2021-22 season. See this year’s Awards, including Kimberly Akimbo for Best Musical, here.
VIDEO: Watch the cast of A Strange Loop’s Tiny Desk Concert with NPR.
The Show Must Go On Documentary, highlighting how two tour companies kept theatre alive during the pandemic, is now available to stream on Broadway on Demand and Apple TV. Read more here.
Prepare your students for next year’s competition season! Add these plays to their summer reading list to kickstart their competition plans:
We can’t let May pass without acknowledging a huge moment in theatre history: The Laramie Project opens at the Union Square Theatre Off-Broadway in 2000. The play is based on research and on-site interviews by Moisés Kaufman's Tectonic Theater Project, focusing on the aftermath of the 1998 beating death of gay college student Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming. It runs 126 performances before heading to schools around the country. Has your school performed it yet?
Competition tip: 7 steps to win a Thespy.
For Fun: Love doing the daily Wordle? Give the BroadwayWorld game a shot.
Vacation Calling: A Night at the Theater: Visit London’s West End!
If vacation calls me I’m answering it so fast 😭
Stop it with the broadway wordle ....I CANNOT ❤️