When a Play Goes Wrong

Episode 204: When a Play Goes Wrong

Have you been there? The cast is fighting, no one knows their lines, maybe the flu has swept through the entire school. There are times when opening night is approaching and you are sure you won’t be ready. Drama Teacher Lea Marshall shares her experience with the play that went wrong, what she learned and what she’ll change for next time. In educational theatre, EVERYTHING is a learning experience!

Show Notes

• Drama Teacher Academy
• Poster: It’s Fun to Do the Impossible
• Poster: The Show Will Open

Episode Transcript

Welcome to the Drama Teacher Podcast brought to you by Theatrefolk – the Drama Teacher Resource Company.

Hello! I’m Lindsay Price.

Hello again! I hope you’re well. Thanks for listening!

This is Episode 204 and you can find any links to this episode in the show notes which are at Theatrefolk.com/episode204.

Today, our guest today, she is a treasure. She is a treat. She is an amazing resource, and I am always so happy, I am pleased as punch, I am over the moon when she finds time to talk to us, and this is a topic I know everyone has experience with, everyone will want to listen in on, and I know that you have been there.

You’ve been there!

The cast is fighting. No one knows their lines. Maybe the flu has swept through your entire school. There are times when opening night is approaching, and you are sure you won’t be ready. Maybe you don’t even want to be ready. Maybe you just want to walk away from this play altogether.

Drama teacher Lea Marshall is going share her experience with the play that went wrong, and what she learned, and what she’s going to change for next time because, in educational theatre, everything is a learning experience, right? Right!

Okay. I’ll see you on the other side.

LINDSAY: Hello everyone!

Welcome to the podcast! I am here talking to Lea Marshall.

Hello, Lea!

LEA: Hello!

LINDSAY: Tell everybody where you are in the world right now.

LEA: I am in North Carolina because I am on break – Thanksgiving break. We got a week this year. I’m sorry. I’m sorry to all of you that did not get a week. We probably won’t next year, so I won’t gloat too much.

I’m in North Carolina, though. I’m usually in Tallahassee, Florida, where I live and teach, but I am in Black Mountain, North Carolina. It’s really beautiful here. I’d show you more, but this is the outside of our little Airbnb. My three kids are inside – two of them are in college, and they’re actually doing homework. So, I stepped outside in 23 layers. I swear, it’s like 50 degrees, but I’m in 23 layers.

LINDSAY: Yes, nobody has any sympathy because (a) you have an entire week off – although, when we post this, it’ll be March or something, so Thanksgiving means nothing – and (b) you’re usually in Florida where it’s warm.

LEA: Yes.

LINDSAY: You have just completed a production of Steel Magnolias.

LEA: Yes.

LINDSAY: And what you would like to say, because we’ve had conversations before about other productions. Are you sitting in yoga pants? Are you done with the show?

LEA: In my yoga pants.

The funniest story is that we did the post-production for To Kill a Mockingbird last time and I was in my yoga pants on the couch. In the middle of production – like, the bad three weeks, the last couple of weeks of it – I re-listened to that only because I needed to remind myself that, one day, again, I would sit on my couch in yoga pants and sound that calm and happy.

I want to be back in that space where I remembered how it felt to be done. And so, I listened to that. I was like, “Oh, I need to record another one so that, next time, I can listen to both of them, and remember how it felt to be done – how good it felt.” It will happen.

You will, at some point, be done.

LINDSAY: That gets us right to what we’re talking about today which is what happens when your production becomes the play that goes wrong.

LEA: I had that script. I just didn’t know that I would be doing it.

LINDSAY: You didn’t know that Steel Magnolias would become that play.

LEA: Yeah.

LINDSAY: I know now is the time for lots of productions to be happening. Maybe tech weeks to be happening. Teachers in stress and disarray about everything falling apart around you which I think happens more often than not when things just seem like (a) they’re never going to be over and (b) they’re just awful.

Let’s take a step back and we’ll ease into the awfulness.

Why did you choose Steel Magnolias?

LEA: I was thinking this year is strong wind, strong trees, and so about how strong wind make us strong trees. Also, my next play, The Arsonist, is about how we have to be strong trees because there will be strong wind against us.

Steel Magnolias was my fall show. The play that goes wrong should also be called “All the Mistakes I Made.” I’m glad we had the thing on failure last night because that was really great for me to set me up to talk about all my failures for this play.

I do things very intentionally, as you know. Of course, I can say “I usually” because I’ve only taught high school one year or so. Usually, the one-act is supposed to be in the fall and it’s supposed to be done completely by my advanced class, but The Arsonist is more of a one-act, but it’s also a bigger cast.

And so, Steel Magnolias, I didn’t want to limit my everybody audition play to only six girls being in it. I chose to do Steel Magnolias in the fall which is a much shorter prep time with my advanced class doing everything for it. And so, that is why I chose it for the fall. I would still choose it again for the fall, but I’ll definitely just do a one-act next year in the fall.

Steel Magnolias – scene one of the first act is like a one-act in and of itself. And then, you have three more acts which are – granted – not as long. But it’s a heck of a play to take on.

The dialogue is really hard in it because it’s very nonsensical. It’s six women sitting around a salon, talking, and they’ll be talking about Point A. I mean, one of our favorite, we had to really help our Truvy deal with some of the dialogue. She’ll mention crab claws and then her next line is about romance which is not usually a natural segue for normal people. So, we had to teach her these kinds of things about, every time, of course, crab claws make you think about romance.

For almost all of her lines, she had these funny little things that she had to connect in her brain to do that. It was a very hard play in that sense that I chose it when I should have chosen a one-act.

That was Mistake #1.

Let’s start categorizing them.

LINDSAY: Okay, we’ll talk categorizing, and learning from them.

LEA: Yes!

LINDSAY: We’re learning from failure, and it’s not failure. It’s something that happened, and then you survived it, and then you can do something else.

Interesting step one about your time and how much time you have to prepare a play and how, on the one hand, it was a good choice because of your circumstance. If you had to choose a full-length for this time, that shorter prep time is huge, isn’t it?

LEA: Yeah, it really is, and the fact that the prep time is mostly in class, that means you’ve got 40 minutes at the most and then the bell rings, and they’ve got a lead, and this is just a play that you really needed longer rehearsals for.

Once we actually got to the last two weeks which is our after-school rehearsals and got it up on the stage and started running it in longer amounts of time, it did come together, but it was hard fought for – it really was hard.

Of course, I picked the theme – strong wind, strong trees – so I don’t know why I thought it would be easy. Next year, my theme is going to be “take a nap.”

/LINDSAY: And we all just chill. It’s yoga pants. It’s yoga. You’re just going to go onstage and everyone’s just going to breathe some downward dogs and lots of “ohms” – that would be good.

Mistake #1: Mistaking the prep time that you would need. Also, having this notion of just time of rehearsals where your rehearsals were done in class, and choosing a play that reflects that.

LEA: And not only the rehearsals were done in class but, like all theatre teachers, set design, costumes, all of that. I’m working so hard with the actors, and the people are coming up to me like, “What about this for the set design?” and I’m just crazed.

And then, they’re trying to paint the set and create it in only 30 minutes of class time a day and then put stuff away and stuff like that. You know, it was just in the middle of it was horrible.

LINDSAY: What’s Mistake #2 in the play that goes wrong?

LEA: I double-cast some parts.

LINDSAY: Why?

LEA: Well, I mean, I talked about this. Krista is also another teacher.

LINDSAY: Another teacher in Virginia.

LEA: She mistakenly gave me her phone number at some point, so I’ll give it out to all of you who are in the middle of play production going wrong. You know, we struggle with this idea of what is our role as educators and it being an educational experience and everybody getting to participate and then what is our aesthetic, you know?

And so, for me, because it’s my 3, 4 class, I had nine girls audition. And so, I cast all of them. I had three girls that were in every cast and then three that alternated – my M’Lynn, Shelby, and Annelle alternated. And then, it’s a cast of all girls.

Can we just take a moment and appreciate that? All girls, double-cast.

LINDSAY: We’ll have a moment of silence.

LEA: Yeah, moment of silence for my loss. Yeah, somebody says, “I feel all of this.” Yeah, you feel it correctly. You are feeling correctly.

So, we had issues. “You like this cast better than the other one.” “This person is doing a better job than this one.” “This person’s interpretation is different than this one. Whose is right?” So, we had all of that kind of going on.

Would I double-cast it again? I don’t know. Like I said, I’d do it again in the fall with some other additions – time things – but would I double-cast it again? I don’t know if I would. That got really hard because, again, that’s also a time issue because you’ve got your three characters that are getting half the stage time as the other characters. And so, it is harder for them to learn blocking and that kind of thing. It made it easier on some time with absences and stuff like that. You can get people to fill in. But I made it harder still by double-casting those three parts.

LINDSAY: It’s really interesting.

I like that question that you brought up of education versus aesthetic.

LEA: I wish I could answer it. You know, it’s a balance. I think it’s always a balance. I’m in educational theatre. At one point, Krista said to me, “Is it educational theatre? Then you’ve done your job.” Aesthetic theatre, that’s awesome, and we strive for that. We totally do.

But, really, at the end of the day, like Matt said last night, has everybody learned something? Has everybody learned something from it – even if it was I learned what I did wrong?

LINDSAY: Just to recap what’s going on, for our Drama Teacher Academy, we have monthly professional learning community events. Last night’s topic was on failure. We’re all in this mode now of just talking about failure.

What is failure? Did everybody learn something? Well, then nobody failed.

If somebody learned something, even though it may not feel like it was the right choice, it is still the right choice, right? That’s what we want to think, anyway.

LEA: Yeah, that’s what we want to think.

The double-casting, I did everybody that auditioned, and everybody got the part they auditioned for. It just kind of worked out that way. So, I was happy about that, and I think they were happy. But, during the process, it was really with the nine girls.

LINDSAY: Hey, we just got a comment here about liking your idea about having a theme for the year. In your theme this year, it was “strong wind, strong trees.” What was your theme last year? Because that was a really nice one, too.

LEA: Yes, it was “fear versus love.” I was new at the school and the kids had lost their theatre teacher and now had me – oh, lucky kids! And so, we could either react in fear or we could act in love. And so, let’s not react in fear. I didn’t want to react in fear when they said, “We liked our other teacher better!” or “This is the way somebody else did something!” I wanted to always be acting in love. And so, we did To Kill a Mockingbird and Antigone – a one-act version of Antigone was my fall one for my advanced class – with no set and very few costumes which this one I did set and costume. So, there was a lot more going into it than last year’s one-act.

LINDSAY: Oh, I bet that’ll be a mistake.

Before we move on back, before we get more on your failures, that whole notion of having a theme. When things are going wrong, that’s something you can always go back to. “Look, things are going wrong. We are strong trees! Strong winds are the problems. Strong trees are what we are.”

LEA: And the idea that I even kept revisiting that fear versus love. Am I reacting in fear that the show is going to suck instead of acting in love and “you know what, this is what it is and let’s give it as a gift of love instead of reacting in fear and getting all unable to continue because of being afraid, let’s just act in love and just laugh.” At some point, you do have to laugh when everything is going wrong – or else, you do give up.

Let’s just go for it. When everybody doesn’t know their lines, let’s figure out. Let’s act in love and what’s a loving way to move forward. What’s a way we can love theatre and the actors and move forward and help without reacting in fear of yelling and screaming or cancelling the show?

LINDSAY: See, I’m really glad I brought that up because that’s really nice. I really like that. How do we deal when everything is falling apart around us? Are we going to react in fear? Or are we going to love when you don’t know your lines? How do we move forward?

LEA: Yeah, and acting is an active creation. What can we create out of these failures instead of just reacting to them which is sometimes rehashing?

How large is your school? I have 2,000 high schoolers. My advanced class is 27 kids and there’s 28 in this combined Theatre 3 and 4 class. I see about 200 students a day. And then, I have a little over 100 in my thespian troupe.

LINDSAY: Very cool. Yes, just to pin on that, it’s an act of creation.

How are we going to create this? How are we going to create something?

Okay. So, we had the mistake of time, the mistake of casting – casting is everything, isn’t it?

LEA: Yes, it is!

LINDSAY: What was Mistake #3 in the play that goes wrong?

LEA: Mistake #3 was, again, in this amount of time, trying to do it all – trying to have the set, trying to have the costumes, trying to have the authentic 80’s props, trying to do it all for this essentially that should have been a one-act. So, trying to do that.

I pushed a lot of kids out of their comfort zones with this. Some of them I just pushed out of their comfort zones. I had a kid who’d never done set building my set. I had a girl who’d never done costumes in charge of the costumes. I should have cloned myself. Of course, every theatre teacher needs to clone herself. They needed some more support, and I was not able to give them the support that they needed. But, man, they did make it work. They did!

LINDSAY: Well, it’s the whole notion of “Well, this is what you’ve got to do. Go do it.”

That’s a “let them fail” situation, right? It’s like, “You might not succeed at this but, by goodness, next time…” because there is a little bit of that, right? The next situation, the next time, even though we want every show to be perfect, they’re just not going to be.

LEA: And I did get to see that a little bit. I had a girl who last year was in charge of the costumes for the one-act for the 3 and 4 class. She kind of failed miserably. I mean, I kept saying, “Get me what I need to get.” She kind of failed miserably.

We were able to make it work at the last minute, but mostly because I just kind of did it, and the other kids in it did not. She came back to Theatre 3 and 4 this year which is a little bit of a surprise to me, but she came back and really talked to me about how she wanted a second chance. And so, she was in charge of the makeup for this – hair and makeup – which is a big deal in Steel Magnolias.

She knocked it out of the park, and she even wrote me a little note that just said, “I was really inspired last year to be more excellent in the way that I do things, and she really did a great job and that was one of the successes – her working on that hair and makeup, and she really pushed people. She was like, “Your makeup designs are due today! Where are they?” and so, she was really great, and I just did not have to worry at all about hair and makeup because she totally took it over.

LINDSAY: That’s a huge success! I think that’s a huge success.

LEA: That was a huge success. Let me just pat myself on my 12 layers of clothing back.

LINDSAY: But, you know what, it’s that notion too about how, sometimes, when we think something is going horribly wrong, that something else is happening – something offstage is happening, something inside a kid is happening.

LEA: You won’t see until the next year.

LINDSAY: Yeah, which is frustrating.

LEA: Yeah.

LINDSAY: Well, that’s pretty awesome.

So, things you could not do at all, what did you have to let go?

LEA: I really had to let go of the set and then it came together really well, really beautifully. We were hanging the last thing on the set five minutes before the last dress rehearsal started. I mean, that’s how late it was, and our stage is super busy. We have so much in the performing arts going on at our school. Our stage is super busy.

We actually have three days to put up the set before our dress rehearsal happens, and that’s it. So, it was kind of a very last-minute on the set during Saturday rehearsal, before we opened on Thursday, our lights died. I was actually texting Krista at that point, “Oh, good, our lights just died. Of course, they did!”

It turned out there was a fan that had been broken for a while. The lights were like, “Now we’re too hot!” In fact, they did an entire dress rehearsal with the lights going off and then coming back on – off, coming back on – and then they did the entire dress rehearsal that way. Then, they did an entire dress rehearsal with the set being built around them. So, they were really troopers – the cast was.

We didn’t know if she’d have actual lights for the show. At one point, I thought, “I’m just going to give everybody in the audience a flashlight and it’s going to be interactive – just shine your flashlight on the stage.”

At that point, I was like, “You know what? If we don’t have lights, I have three lamps on the stage,” and my lighting designer said I was obsessed with the lamps the whole time. Like, “Can you make the lamps turn on? Turn the lamps on brighter.” At the end, when the lights weren’t working, I was like, “See? We’re going to need those lamps! I told you those lamps were a good idea!” So, we thought we would really just do it by lamp light.

LINDSAY: Hey, man. You know what? Found lighting is a beautiful thing.

I know a teacher who got a brand-new stage built – except for the lights. She went into the new school, new season, and kept saying, “Yeah, they’re coming. Yeah, they’re coming.” They did not come. She was like, “Okay! We’re doing a show,” and they did Our Town with all found lighting. They had nothing.

You just do with what you’ve got. I think that is what educational theatre is, right?

LEA: Oh! I will say, my admin was incredible. She had a part overnighted – not knowing whether this was actually going to solve the problem or not, but I think she paid $300 to have this part overnighted to get it fixed. I kept telling the performing arts, our next big thing is our performing arts winter showcase which is huge and it’s everything – guitar, steel drums, chorus. We do a little ten-minute.

We did your thing last year. Remember? Miss Meyermyer’s Christmas.

LINDSAY: Yes, of course!

LEA: Anyway, that’s a huge thing, and we sell out and it’s big. I said, “Had they not died right before my thing, they would have died during pause.” And so, I just took that for the team and dealt with that so that it did not happen during our performing arts winter showcase which is when it would have happened and that would have been terrible. But we actually got it and the lights worked by the time the show opened. We had three microphones that died during the show. But, you know, whatever!

LINDSAY: By that point, you just would have been like, “Yup! Okay! Yup!”

LEA: I know!

The kid doing sound was like, “We’ve lost three mics!” I’m like, “I can still hear ‘em! The show keeps going. Go! I can still hear them. It’s fine! Project more, come on!!

LINDSAY: Just talking about the difficulties of Steel Magnolias which you don’t realize until you’re in the thick of it, as you know. What’s the name of your school, Lea?

LEA: Leon High School in Tallahassee, Florida.

LINDSAY: Accents and hairstyles.

LEA: Yeah, hairstyles.

LINDSAY: Was that part of the overwhelming thing? Did you do accents? Did you have them do hairstyles?

LEA: We are southern, so that was not a huge thing, and I will say, a couple of my students take acting from this great Naomi Rose-Mock. Let me just give a shoutout. She actually came and helped me one day during rehearsal and was fantastic! I reached out for help. I really did.

I had two great directors – Naomi direct in the community and then I had Phil Croton who’s a friend of mine with Southern Shakespeare in Tallahassee and he actually came and watched one of our rehearsals and helped also. They were both great when I contacted them and just said, “I feel like I’m drowning with this.” They both were like, “I’ll come to a rehearsal and help.”

Really, do not be afraid to reach out to people. I am not a director. I’m becoming one. I’m learning – thank you, Drama Teacher Academy, for helping me! But do not be afraid to reach out. I mean, I think there’s no people like show people. They were like, “When do you want me to come? When are your rehearsals? I’ll be there!”

And so, they came and helped. Some of it was I just was worried the blocking was hard in it. They’re sitting in a salon.

LINDSAY: They’re sitting – sitting and chatting.

LEA: The whole show.

I just kept thinking, “Oh, my gosh, they’re just sitting and getting their hair done.” It needs to be more action, right? They came and were like, “No, your blocking is not horrible.” They tweaked a couple of things.

In one place, they had M’Lynn move a line later which – oh, my gosh! – was revolutionary. It’s that funny when you’re like, “Oh, yeah, one line later makes all the difference.”

Naomi moved my set in a little bit. I had set it too wide and she said, “These girls need to be up on top of each other.” I was like, “Maybe not. I don’t know if you’ve been living with them for the last couple of weeks, Naomi,” but that helped – having them up. She’s like, “It’s a carport. They need to be up in everybody’s business. That’s how they are.” I had made my set too wide.

They helped me with some little tweaks like that that really did help make the show a lot better and were just at that point beyond what I could think of doing.

LINDSAY: Awesome. Awesome!

So, we have time, we casting, we have trying to be Wonder Woman which how do you solve that problem? Ask for help.

Let things go and ask for help, I think is the lesson learned.

One more, do you have one more?

LEA: I would say, one more, I’d find somebody. You know, most of us are single drama teachers in the school. And so, it was really helpful for me, as some of you may remember, I put a post up on Drama Teacher Academy – like, “Hey! We’re 2.5 weeks away. Everybody in the cast wants to kill me. Is this typical? Asking for a friend.” It was so funny the responses I got.

Of course, I reached out to Krista who we have kind of developed this kind of drama teacher sisterhood kind of thing because she had just finished her show. We keep saying we need to make sure on our calendars we’re not doing shows at the same time, so we can really help each other. She had just finished a show and she was the one that was like, “It will open. It will close. And then, you will put on your yoga pants.”

That kind of just became my mantra: “It will open, and then it will close. And, at some point, it will be over, and I can breathe again.” And so, that was just really just find another drama teacher or somebody that you can reach out to, and that’s why Drama Teacher Academy is so great because you can get on Facebook and say, “I need help with this!” or “I’m drowning!” or “What have you done about this?” or “Have any of you done this?”

There’s always somebody who either will encourage you and go, “Yup! Me, too!” which I love C.S. Lewis says that’s how friendship begins – somebody saying, “What? I thought I was the only one!” “Me, too!” You just feel great when that happens. It’s like, “Okay, I’m not the only one that all this has happened to,” and there are some great ideas for that.

Krista gave me a great idea about having the kids do beat cheat sheets which is go through and see when the beat changes and make notes about that and even put them up on the stage if they need to. None of my kids really needed to at the end, and I was like, “Oh, I’ll make those,” and Krista was like, “No, you will not. They will make those because that’s how they’ll remember it – it’s if they make it.”

And so, I told them. I’d actually already talked to them about it, but none of them had made it. Finally, I was like, “Listen, you can make it, or you cannot, but I assure you, it will help you if you make it, and some of them did and that helped them learn their lines.

Phil Croton gave them a great idea to record the whole show and then just listen to it all the time and just record everybody’s lines and listen to it. That really helped them because they were able to help when somebody else dropped a line and they were able to help and say something – you know, improv their way through that to get that part in. That was a great suggestion.

All at the last minute. I feel like it’s always at the last minute.

LINDSAY: It happens.

We’ve been talking a little bit about DramaTeacherAcademy.com. There’s a link up on the screen for those of you listening to the podcast. There’s going to be a link in the show notes.

Lea, you’re just selling our stuff for us. That’s all great. Awesome!

As we wrap up here, what was your biggest takeaway from the play that went wrong for you? What was your biggest takeaway? I know you don’t want to think about it. What are you going to do moving forward? What are you going to do next time?

LEA: I think I really need to evaluate what are my educational goals and what are my aesthetic goals for it. And then, how much weight do I give each one? I do not think I will double-cast. I really don’t think I’ll double-cast for this next one. The Arsonist has a Greek chorus of firemen, so we can put a lot of people in it, but I don’t think I’ll double-cast the leads for that even though that does give kids more time onstage.

Wait and see. We’ll wait and see if I decide to go that route again.

I think just really looking a little more seriously at the play that I choose when it is a production in class and how much time I’m going to have in class versus how much time I have when I do the spring show. And are after-school longer rehearsals? I think I’m just going to have to learn to evaluate plays a little bit differently and choose something that can be done as a class production for the fall production.

LINDSAY: It’s just amazing how the content of the play is great, but that the other factors can actually derail you. It wasn’t the play. It was the play.

LEA: The content is beautiful. It’s a beautiful play. It’s just the time needed to do it justice, we did not have. I think we did in the end.

One of my admin – again, the one that ordered the part really quick for me – she had said when I first said, “I think we’ll be doing Steel Magnolias,” she said, “Oh, that’s a hard play.” She knows everything. I don’t know why she knows everything, but she does. She goes, “That’s a hard play.” I did not listen to her.

Halfway through, I was like, “Slap me next time. When you tell me something, slap me when you tell me something. It’s a hard play.” She’s like, “It really is.” She looked at me and said, “But, if anybody can put it up on that stage, it’s you,” and that really just inspired me so much.

I told the girls at the cast dinner. I said, “You know, Miss Hembree said this was a really hard play. It was really hard to do.” I said, “Sometimes, it’s fun to do the impossible which we have done. We are putting this play up on the stage and it is solid. It really is solid.”

One of them, in her thank-you said, “Thank you for believing that we could do something that our admin didn’t think that we could.” I was thinking, “No, I was just too stupid.” Sometimes, ignorance is bliss. You do things because you’re thinking, “How could this be hard?” It’s six people in a beauty shop. It’s hard!

LINDSAY: I have in my life the value of ignorance when you’re just like, “Yeah, sure! Why not?” There’s no fear when you really have no idea what you’re doing.

LEA: When you’re stupid, there’s no fear!

LINDSAY: What a great way to end! It’s fun to do the impossible!

If that’s the only thing we could ever instil in students, I think that they would go out and they would have pretty amazing lives. It’s fun to do the impossible.

Sweet!

Lea, thank you so much taking time out of your holiday and sitting outside!

LEA: Sitting outside in 50-degree weather with five layers on.

LINDSAY: We appreciate you! You earned your yoga pants! You see that?

LEA: It will open, it will close, and there will be yoga pants.

We can say it too in emojis now. Krista sent it to me in emojis and it’s really cute.

“It will open, it will close, and there will be yoga pants.”

LINDSAY: Perfect.

Thank you so much, Lea!

LEA: Bye!

LINDSAY: Thank you, Lea!

Before we go, let’s do some THEATREFOLK NEWS.

So, Lea Marshall is not only just a treasure and a treat and an amazing resource, but she is also a curriculum contributor to our Drama Teacher Academy, and we have some great stuff from her.

We have in the DTA a great Theatre of the Absurd unit and also an Ancient Greek Theatre hyperdock which she put together specifically to give students during Tech Week when she’s tearing her hair out and she still has to teach.

So, DTA – the Drama Teacher Academy – is a membership site just for drama teachers. It offers professional development, curriculum resources, and community. You can find out more at DramaTeacherAcademy.com or click the link in the show notes which you can find at Theatrefolk.com/episode204.

Since you’ve made it this far in the podcast – I know, there’s not many of you, but thank you! – I’d also like to point out in the show notes where you will find some extra treats just for you. Yes! Yes, I mean it!

There are two posters that this episode kind of inspired me to have made up. So, they’re there in the show notes.

Finally, where can you find this podcast? Go to Theatrefolk.com/podcast and there you will see we are on iTunes, Android, Google Play, Stitcher, and more. That’s Theatrefolk.com/podcast.

And that’s where we’re going to end.

Take care, my friends. Take care.

Music credit:”Ave” by Alex (feat. Morusque) is licensed under a Creative Commons license.