Theater and Drama

As part of the Playworks Program here at the International Thespian festival, students have the opportunity to audition and rehearse one of the plays being workshopped. The audition day was very intense. We sat through auditions from 9:00 am straight through to 12:45 and then we have half an hour to cast the roles between five plays. Students were put in groups and performed in scenes from the individual plays with monologues, duets or trios. Over the course of the morning, we say 185 students and that doesn't count the students we saw twice who were called back. By 11 am we were starting to feel the time crunch. Call backs were discouraged, repeat reads had to be culled down, we had to see the groups and move on if we were ever going to make sure every students got their moment.

I love nothing more than a theatre full of people leaning forward in their seats so they don't miss a word. And the roar of a crowd enjoying themselves can be immensely seductive.

Highlighted by songs in which women celebrate the murder of wayward men and a lawyer demonstrates the art of manipulating the media, musicals don't get much more cynical than Chicago. A ripped-from-the-headlines jazz-age play by Chicago Tribune reporter Maurine Dallas Watkins turned into a 1975 musical by songwriters John Kander and Fred Ebb in collaboration with Bob Fosse, Chicago enjoyed an initial run of qualified success, overshadowed by the crowd-pleasing A Chorus Line. It makes perfect sense, however, that it found a second audience on Broadway in the 1990s

Equally comfortable playing romantic leads and action heroes, he has never been quite a force in theatre. This is partly a matter of choice. He has prioritised screen roles over stage opportunities. The last time he acted on stage was in 2009 in a popular West End production of Richard Greenberg's three-hander Three Days of Rain. In the mean time he has been taking a while to shake off the halo of urgent youth. He has tended to play callow characters more sinned against than sinning - the closest he's come to anything like villainy is as Idi Amin's morally compromised medic.

From Singin' in the Rain and Anything Goes to Hello, Dolly! and Mary Poppins, Olivier Award winner Stephen Mear has done more than any other British choreographer to usher classic musicals into the modern era. But adept as he is at razzle-dazzling 'em, there's more to Mear, as recent excursions like City of Angels at Donmar Warehouse and Die Fledermaus for the Metropolitan Opera prove. His contribution to the lauded Gypsy revival, opening next week at the Savoy Theatre following a triumphant Chichester run, demonstrates the combination of emotional engagement and quick-witted entertainment that makes him such a formidable talent.

A film director, like an orchestra conductor, is the lord of his domain, and no director has more power than a director of animated films. He is set free from the rules of the physical universe and the limitations of human actors, and can tell any story his mind can conceive. That's no doubt why Chuck Jones, after creating the characters of the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, immediately wrote down the rules of what could and could not happen in their universe. If anything could happen (and it could), the comedy would be lost in anarchy.

I adore using questions and answers as part of the writing process. It's an excellent way to get yourself out of writers block. It's a great method for creating specific characters. For creating a thesis for your work. It's something that should be at the heart of every project: what question is being answered here?

Students often get hung up on the notion that in the theatre, sets, costumes, props all have to meet the standard of the movies. They have to be three dimensional and real. A car must have four wheels and move. A house must have two levels and different rooms. The truth is actually quite different - a theatre audience is very forgiving. If you let them know what world the play inhabits (two people sitting side by side on cubes, one holds their hands up as if holding a steering wheel) they will believe. They will go along for the ride. A single object can be so many different things - a chair can be a chair, or a car, or a mountain. The possibilities are endless.

The culminating activity for collaboration in the drama classroom is to have your students work on a devising project. It will definitely show you how well your students work together! More on devising in the next blog post, but here's an exercise to get your students in the right frame of mind.

Start the exercise with a discussion. What is a mixed message? What does it look like and sound like? Give this definition: Mixed messages say one thing with the body and another thing with the voice.

Everyone stands in a circle, including the teacher. The teacher cups his/her hands and says, "I'm holding something amazing in my hands. It's magic putty. I can use it to make any kind of toy that I want. For example…"

The basic marshmallow challenge (detailed instructions here) is an ideal exercise to sharpen collaboration skills. It's works because it's so simple: groups of four are given 18 minutes to build the tallest free standing building they can with 20 sticks of uncooked spaghetti, one yard of masking tape, one yard of string, and one marshmallow. The time limit is important - it forces students to collaborate quickly. The competition aspect is also important - this pushes groups to work at their best.

Housch-ma-Housch is one of the funniest and most talented comedians in the world. His one man show is the result of many years of work. He delights the audience with a performance combining miming, clowing and magic. This comedian is an absolute multi-talent and palette of his roles is almost limitless.

He told The Stage: "Probably the most interesting thing is the bird caller. Plays like Romeo and Juliet have several references to birdsong so it could well have been used as a theatrical prop to create special effects."

A stage adaptation of Roal Dahl's 'The Twits' for my directing unit at university.

This narrative document outlines the philosophy, primary goals, dynamic processes, structures , and outcomes that shape student learning and achievement in dance, media arts, music, theatre, and visual arts, as articulated in the National Core Arts Standards .

Here is a big ole' list of links to Lesson Plans for Drama Teachers. And see the bottom of this post for a printable PDF: Top Ten Tips For Writing Awesome Lesson Plans!

He adds "I had my luck because Robert Mackintosh decided to drive to Guilford to see Putting it Together. I wouldn't be here now if that hadn't happened. Actually, I'd say it's 60% who you know and 40% what you know."

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