Production Case Study: Annie

Episode 201: Production Case Study: Annie

Where do you start with a play? How do you come up with a vision that spans across character development, light, sound, set, costuming? How do you execute on that vision? And then how do you put all that into an entertaining musical? Listen in to this production case study on the musical Annie.

Show Notes

• Drama Teacher Academy
• The Myths at the Edge of the World
• The Perils of Modern Education

Episode Transcript

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

I’m Lindsay Price.

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

This is Episode 201 and you can find any links to this episode in the show notes which are at Theatrefolk.com/episode200.

Today, I am talking to a dear friend here at Theatrefolk Global Headquarters, a man who wears many hats, for us and for others – Matt Webster.

Matt has been in the classroom. He’s taught students to become drama teachers. He’s a playwright. For this podcast, we’re going to talk to him in his role as a director – specifically, what it’s like to direct the musical, Annie. It’s a production case study!

So, let’s find out if the old adage is right that you should never work with animals and children. Let’s find out, shall we?

See you on the other side!

LINDSAY: Hello everybody!

Lindsay Price here, and I am talking to Matt Webster.

MATT: Hello everyone!

LINDSAY: Now, usually, I ask where people are in the world, but we happen to be sitting right beside each other.

MATT: Side by side in Cedar City, Utah.

LINDSAY: But where do you usually hail from?

MATT: I hail from Charlotte, North Carolina.

LINDSAY: Very nice.

We are here today. We’re doing a production case study. We’ve done a number of these and I really love being able to talk to folks about the process of putting on a production. We have so many people who listen. I have to put on many, many shows in a year. Some people don’t know where to start, right?

MATT: Absolutely.

LINDSAY: What show are we talking about?

MATT: We are talking about the show “Annie, the Musical.”

LINDSAY: Awesome. You didn’t do any Junior. You did the full-on Annie?

MATT: We did the full-on Annie.

LINDSAY: The first thing is this wasn’t your choice. You were hired to direct Annie.

MATT: Yes, I was hired as a director for a local community theatre company and one of the reasons that they chose me was because I have a background in theatre for youth and working with children. they wanted to have children in the cast as orphans, including small children. That’s why I was offered the job.

LINDSAY: So, what was the age range?

MATT: I ended up casting a 5-year-old as the youngest who turned 6 during rehearsal which was one of my most brilliant things I have to say because she was adorable. But the range was from 6 to 60 is the cast range.

LINDSAY: Awesome, awesome.

Let’s start with your first steps in working on a show. One of the reasons I know that a lot of schools do Annie, but I know too that sometimes the teachers are in a position where they’re putting on shows that they might not necessarily like. I know a lot of teachers who are in the position where they know they have to do musicals, and musicals just aren’t their bag.

As a director, what was your first step in approaching the script and the score?

MATT: With Annie, there’s a really interesting challenge and that is we had to figure out which version we were using. The problem is that we were not allowed to get the script more than two months in advance or we’d have to pay extra.

So, a script was found, but there are multiple versions of Annie. There’s the original version. There’s a rewrite in the 80’s and then a newer version. In addition, online, the choreographer and the music director and some of the actors who were cast looked at some of the music online and some of the scenes online and they didn’t always match up to what we were actually going to do in the script that we were being given by the publishing company.

So, I had to read the script – obviously, as the director, you read the script as often as possible – but I also had to read it, keeping in mind it may not be the actual script and lines and usage that we would ultimately put onstage.

So, that was challenge number one – figuring out which version of Annie we were going to product.

LINDSAY: That makes an excellent point.

Because of the access to online stuff today, you want to be really careful. You don’t want to be, first of all, it’s illegal to start copying stuff off the internet and just sort of focusing on that. You don’t want to necessarily drive your students or drive your cast like, “Oh, you should just go watch this video. This video, this is what we’re going to be doing.” That’s not necessarily the case today.

MATT: No, and not only that but you’re right, especially when you’re dealing with students, you have a lot of kids who are like, “Oh, I can just see that online,” “I watched this and it’s going to be like this.”

“No, my production is going to be different. Our production is going to be different. The way that they did it in New York, the way that they did it in 1978, the way that they did it in 2005 is not necessarily the way we’re going to do it.”

It’s not just a matter of changes that may have occurred in the script – although, obviously, that’s very important. It’s also a matter of how you approach the material and the concept that you’re bringing to the production as a director and as a cast because that will change from production to production. How one production company or movie company chose to do it years ago is not the same way that you’re going to approach it based on what you have to work with – your facility, your budget, your material, your cast.

Be aware that they’re going to want to go out and go, “Oh, I saw this and it’s going to be…” “Okay. It’s great that you saw it. It’s great that you have it in your head. Don’t think that’s how it’s going to be.”

LINDSAY: Another issue with musicals is that they are a freight train in terms of “we have to do the music and the music goes like this and we have to do the dance and we have to do that.” Sometimes, I think a musical’s vision gets lost or what a director might actually want to do that’s different gets lost.

How did you find that? Were you able to think of how you were going to have a vision for the piece and how you were going to communicate that to the folks? Or did you feel the freight train?

MATT: A little bit of both.

Definitely, once the production started in earnest, it was a freight train. You’re looking at that opening night date, and everything has to be ready. Really, it’s not. It’s all-encompassing. It’s the choreography. It’s the music. It’s the scenic design. It’s the costuming. It’s the sound design.

In the case of Annie, it’s working with children and a dog. That, as much as anything, was what would keep me awake at night. The children were fantastic. The dog ultimately was fantastic when we worked it out. But just knowing that all of those pieces come together and, if any of those pieces start to come apart, the whole thing begins to unravel.

Communication is really incredibly important. We had a lot of production meetings with the technical and the design staff. Wonderfully, I got along great with the choreographer and the music director.

Now, that being said, the original music director that we had lined up had health issues and had to drop out. And so, the preliminary work that I had done with this individual went out the window. Suddenly, I was working with a new individual and we kind of had to start over again. That led to a little bit of friction over the course of rehearsal because actors would say, “Well, the former music director said we could do it this way,” or “He was going to change that.” The new music director is like, “That’s great, but I’m not going to do that. We’re going to approach it a different way.”

My job was to help kind of keep that from blowing up and smoothing it out and making sure that people got what thy needed and, once again, that what was in mind, what was at the forefront the whole time is we have an audience. The show needs to be at a certain level. It needs to be good.

LINDSAY: How much were you able to do before your auditions?

MATT: Unfortunately, not as much as I would have liked to.

Once again, this idea that we auditioned three or four months ahead of time because we’re coming into the summer season and there’s a lot of other theatre companies that are auditioning at the same time and the pool isn’t endless. And so, we knew we needed to get the best people we could get, and we needed to do it early enough to lock those people in.

Even getting the people in place early wasn’t necessarily helpful because, once again, we didn’t have a script in hand that we could give to them. I didn’t have a set script in concrete that I could work off of, so it was very amorphous for the first couple of months.

But I did as much research as I could. I read the script that I had available to me. I did listen to the music online and looked at some of the things that were done. But, personally, as a director, I don’t like to do that because, once again, this is my show. I’m not going to recreate someone else’s show. I want it to be my show.

LINDSAY: How did you audition? Were you looking for good singers? Were you looking for character actors who could do some singing? What was your emphasis in terms of the auditions?

MATT: Well, because I’m working with a choreographer and a music director, I’m going to count on them to give me input as far as, you know, I might see something in choreography or I might hear something in the music that sounds good to me, and they’ll come to me and go, “No, they’re hitting something wrong.” They look it on the surface, but they’ve got a flawed work of some way. So, I was really dependent on them for those insights.

But what I was looking for was very much that idea of character. Can you get up and audition? Can you not just sing, not just dance, but bring something to it that grabs my attention? That shows me you think onstage? That shows me you have an understanding of what’s going to be required here? It’s great that you have a great voice but, if all you do is stand there stock-still and sing, then I don’t know that you can do the physical things that need to happen.

By the same token, if you’re a really good character actor and you’re out there and you really turn it up and you’re cracking every note that you’re hitting, I don’t know that the music director can work with you.

Same thing with the choreographer, as far as that goes. If you’re up there and you can’t keep the rhythm and you’re getting lost in the steps that are happening and it’s throwing you off for your singing and it’s throwing you off for your choreography, then we have to seriously consider whether or not you’re going to be capable of doing what needs to be done.

Taking all of those things into consideration, I’m looking especially at character, I’m looking especially at the kind of energy and the kind of enthusiasm that they’re bringing to it as well. And then, there’s a lot of very in-depth discussions with the choreographer, music director, and director in that audition process to say, “Here are the people that we think will do best in this production.”

LINDSAY: It’s really a collaborative process, isn’t it? From the get-go.

MATT: It has to be.

The other person I collaborated with very early on and very often was the scene designed because that’s another thing that needs time to happen and happen correctly. So, we had to discuss the vision of the piece and be on the same page of how that was going to be executed and what it was going to look like. So, he had the time to do the drawings and he had the time to work with the technical director.

All of that prep and planning and everything else has to happen with enough time to be able to execute it successfully.

LINDSAY: Let’s talk about rehearsals and successes and struggles. We’ll end with the successes. So, let’s start with the struggles. What were some of your prime struggles in the rehearsal process?

MATT: Conflicts, conflicts, conflicts.

As much as we deal with conflicts in educational theatre, conflicts exist in community theatre as well. Really, it’s only when you get to professional theatre that you get to say, “There are no conflicts. This is your job. You will be here.”

But, unfortunately, and especially in a show like Annie, when you’re dealing with adults and children, sometimes you’ve got a child who is in the show and you think, “Oh, they don’t have a conflict,” except their family is going on vacation or something happened with their grandmother and they need to go visit her or something. We had those kinds of conflicts pop up.

Now, I will tell you that what made the show work incredibly well for me was that I had a professional stage manager who absolutely, from top to bottom, organized the show and made my job a whole lot easier. She was on top of conflict. She created calendar after calendar and color-coded the different conflicts and the different work schedules and that made it really easy to follow through on all of that work.

LINDSAY: You know what? I was going to say that the thing that I really liked about when you’re looking for an actor and doing an audition is that you want someone who can think onstage. To complement that, you need someone who can think offstage. If you have actors who can think onstage, and you have a stage manager who can think offstage, all you have to do is really be the person who’s keeping the train running on time, but also you get to do your job.

MATT: Right, and the trust in stage manager is huge.

I knew her because I had worked with this particular stage manager before and knew that she had a reputation of being one of the best – if not the best – stage managers in the Charlotte area.

Boy, I’ll tell you, the trust I had in her was not unfounded because, at every turn, she was a step ahead. She had planned everything. She was a great communicator. Quite frankly, the cast was respectfully scared of her, not in a mean way. You know, when you have the respect of like, “Don’t tick off Nicole.” To a certain extent, I had that as well because I didn’t want to be on her bad side either.

But, you’re right, having a person backstage, having a person who can hold all the organizations pieces together allowed me to concentrate on the creative aspects of it and to have fun with the piece, quite frankly. I didn’t have all of these other things that had to occupy space in my mind.

I was able to concentrate on the actors. I was able to concentrate on the characters. I was able to get the vision that I had up onstage. She was a lynchpin in making all that happen.

LINDSAY: What would you consider your greatest success in this production?

MATT: My greatest success in the production, I believe, is that ultimately the piece that was put onstage was what I envisioned. It was tight. It was fun. Really, that’s the other thing. The cast – and this is very much something that is important to me. The cast had fun. The cast enjoyed each other and enjoyed the process. If any kind of little drama started, we nipped it in the bud. Really, there wasn’t that much to begin with. But, if little things happened, we kept it between us in the production end of it and worked things out so there was never any worries or issues with the cast. If things happened with the cast, we worked it out with them as well.

In the end, there was so much love, there was so much fun. People really enjoyed the process and really enjoyed being in the production. In the end, I believe the audience felt that as well and the audience loved when they were getting from the actors and the performers because the performers were having a great time onstage.

LINDSAY: I think that totally shows when you can tell that a cast is really having fun but in the best possible way – that they’re actually wanting to put the best show forward but also wanting to have a good time as well.

MATT: And they’re proud of their work. I mean, that’s the other thing. They’re really proud of their work and really want to share it with an audience. That’s something that I have to take responsibility for in the rehearsal process because they need to know, as the rehearsal is going forward, we’re on schedule, it looks good, it’s where I want it to be.

Nothing is worse than getting within a week or two of opening night and going, “Holy crap, we’re not ready! There’s going to be a lot of work. People aren’t prepared. People are confused. People aren’t showing up. Those are the kinds of things that really start to take the wheels off and there was none of that – thank goodness!

The other thing that worked really well, once again, working tightly with the production crew and the design crew. This is a show where we get access to the space five days before opening night. So, we have to build in the entire show in three days. And then, we get two days of onstage rehearsals. And then, we have opening night.

LINDSAY: A lot of stress. That’s where things fall apart, really.

MATT: Right. If anything goes wrong, there had been problems with other productions in the past where it took longer to load in than expected and these other issues. Any time that’s taken away from those last couple of rehearsals onstage are going to put a lot of worry and fear in the hearts and minds of the performers because they don’t feel ready. They’re not used to the stage and the space. But we manage to overcome all of that to the point where, opening night, we were ready, and they were excited and happy to be on the stage.

LINDSAY: What a great feeling! What an amazing feeling!

Just going back on this notion of ensemble and building this idea that this cast was working as one and having fun working as one, what advice would you give for others who are working in, again, this idea of the machine that is the musical? Did you really communicate that notion just through tone and the way that you worked and by setting an example? Were you able to do a lot of exercises?

MATT: A combination of those things.

What I can speak directly to is the actress who played Annie – and she was genuinely 8 years old, no, she was 10 years old and she turned 11 during the rehearsal run – this was her first major role that she had ever had. We ended up casting her father in a role – (a) to kind of keep an eye on everything that was going on and (b) we needed extra men, as community theatre often does.

She worked diligently. She did everything we could have hoped and even more so loved what she did. But she was worried, and she was afraid that it wasn’t good enough. She was afraid that she couldn’t hit the highest of the high notes and we adjusted in certain ways.

To me, that’s like you’re playing an 11-year-old child, I don’t expect to hear Broadway level vocals on this because part of the character is that the charm is that this 11-year-old girl is singing her heart out. You know, you don’t want to be off-tune and off-key and everything else. But, to think that she needs to hit every last note perfectly, I didn’t buy into that and that was a very specific discussion I had with her and, separately, with her father.

Just to be able to say to her, “You are doing fantastic. You’re doing everything I need you to do. You’re going above and beyond. You’re acting way above your weight class. I love what you’re doing. Keep going. Keep at it.” Just watching the tension come off of her face and her body and relax a little bit, to know that I’m not sitting back there and going, “You just can’t do this. You’ve got to get better.”

And then, the same thing speaking to her father and saying, “I just told her, and I’ll tell you, I love what she’s doing, she’s doing great,” and watching him take a breath and go, “Okay, we were really worried.” What he didn’t want, and her family didn’t want more than anything, was for her to be embarrassed onstage, for her to have a failure onstage.

I said, “Believe me, I don’t want that either – for her, for us, for all of it. I want her to succeed as much as anything and I would not allow her to go onstage and fail. My job as a director is to prevent that happening by any means possible. I cast her. I have faith in her. I worked with her. If she fails, I fail. And so, whatever I need to do to support her, whatever I need to do to encourage her, I will do.”

In the end, it worked out beautifully.

LINDSAY: Did you guys have a set type of warmups that you did? Was there a ritual to it? Or was there a combination?

MATT: Funny story.

Her father plays the dogcatcher and he’s got three lines as the dogcatcher. One of the lines, this other dogcatcher, the assistant dogcatcher comes up an says, “Hey, we caught this mutt, it’s worth 50 cents.” He says, “That’s fantastic, Nadine!” But he’s from New York.

About halfway through the run of the show, when we’re doing mic checks, one of the other actors for his mic check phrase said, “That’s fantastic, Nadine!” and we started picking it up. And then, one of the musical warmups is, “da-da-da-da-da-da-da!” and the cast started singing, “That is fan-tas-tic, Na-dine!”

Here’s the best part. One of the actors – I don’t know how she managed to do it but – for my cast gift from her, as the director, I got a mug that says, “That’s fantastic, Nadine!”

So, the warmups were very much driven by the music director as far as what she needed to do to get them warmed up. They were driven by the choreographer to make sure they were warmed up that way. And then, I would bring in the character kinds of warmups and the group kind of warmups to bring it together. But, once again, the cast gelled so well. They created their own kind of warmup rituals which, once again, fed into the whole family and fun.

LINDSAY: I think that’s the best way to go. When it’s peer driven, then they’re the ones who are creating the community and you’re not really forcing it on them.

MATT: Right.

Let me talk real quickly about the two things that were kind of the biggest challenges in dealing with Annie and that’s the children and the dog. The children, I had ranged, as I said, from age 5 to 15 or 16 were my oldest ones, and we added a couple of extra ones because, once again, it’s community theatre and you want to give opportunities and a lot of little girls showed up wanting to be in Annie.

So, we cast a couple of extra people and we split a couple of lines around here and there. But what really worked beautifully for me was that I had some of those older girls who really had a heart of leadership and had some experience in theatre. I had worked with one or two of them before in a different show. I was able to depend on them and turn to those older girls and say, “Okay, we’re done with you right now in rehearsal. We’re going to need you again in about half an hour or an hour. Please go into the other rehearsal room with the little ones and run choreography. Go in the other room with the little ones and work on the songs.”

They took that in hand and ran with it and were just so helpful and so amazing in leading the younger girls in the rehearsal process and the singing process and the orphan numbers were ready. I’m telling you. They were ready weeks before any other number because of the dedication that the older girls brought in and the enthusiasm of the younger girls.

It goes back to the idea that I was saying that you have to give encouragement. You’ve got to be really clear in the communication that you have. If you’re working with younger children, you’ve got to realize that you’re working with younger children, and work with them accordingly. You can’t treat them like adult actors because they’re not. You have to give them a little more love and support. You’ve got to be a little more gentle with them and a little more clear in your directions in what you’re trying to do.

If you don’t do that, you’re going to get people who get scared. You’re going to get people who get nervous and worried and that nervousness shows up onstage and that’s when you start having the shakes. When people start thinking onstage about what they’ve missed or what went wrong or anything except when they’re in the moment to do, that’s when you see things start to unravel.

LINDSAY: I think that whole notion of student leadership, I think that’s something that anybody listening should really take to heart. Your seniors should be helping out your freshmen. If you’ve got seniors who have a part that they’re not working on, they should be looking after the ensemble.

MATT: Yes, and it’s good for both. It’s good for both the youngers and the olders. It gives the youngers their peers that they’re working. It allows them to feel like they’re working with their peers. I know a lot of these younger students look up to students who are juniors and seniors who have been there forever. They’re like, “Oh, my gosh, they’ve been in all the plays and they’re in the club and there’s all this other stuff.” By the same token, allowing those older students to then take leadership responsibility and represent the program and the show and these other things and be successful at it, there is no end to the good that that does for them as well.

LINDSAY: Okay, let’s talk about the dog.

MATT: Let’s talk about the dog.

We had a bunch of different ways that we were looking at bringing in the dog in. One of the ideas was that there was a veterinarian agency or a rescue agency that we were going to get a dog from and advertise in the program that the dog was up for adoption and all those other things.

Ultimately, that didn’t work out. Considering what we went through with the dog, I’m glad we didn’t go that route because we had a fantastic dog with a fantastic owner. In fact, it was the choreographer’s father’s dog who did work and work and work with this dog who was the most gentle, just sweet, loving, intelligent dog you could hope for.

But, when it all comes down to it, it’s still a dog and you’re still trying to communicate with an animal that need to do these actors things. It became, for us, a series of problem-solving, a series of how can we get what we need for the audience to see working with what the dog is capable of doing because the dog was trained to sit, the dog was trained to follow, the dog was trained to take a bow.

I swear to you; the dog was trained to take a bow. Much of that went out the window when it wasn’t just the dog owner and the dog but now we have 30 people in the room and you’ve got these children who want to pet the dog and you’ve got different sounds and smells and all these things going on. It was challenging for the dog to stay focused on what was happening.

So, we figured out how to put the dog in work mode. Nobody talk to the dog. Nobody pet the dog. Just leave the dog alone when she’s in rehearsal mode. We had to get the dog to the space way ahead of time so that she could walk on the stage because it’s a different feel of the floor. It’s a slicker floor. It’s not carpeting. It’s hard. The lights coming down on the dog were going to be different and we knew that the one huge thing at the end that was going to potentially throw the whole thing into chaos was that there will be 500 people sitting out there, clapping, making noise, doing all these other things that we can’t prepare the dog for. We can’t bring in an audience of 500 for a rehearsal for the dog to see what’s going on with that.

Even up to preview night, the dog made a couple of errors and, really, at the eleventh hour, we figured out how to solve the problem by blocking and by addressing the strengths of the dog. The quick example I can give is that, when the police officer comes and Annie’s about to sing “Tomorrow” and the officer says, “You need to call your dog by name so that he comes to you,” we had it blocked where the choreographer who the dog would go to naturally was offstage left and Annie was stage right and the officer was between. If the dog caught a glimpse of her owner, she would go the other direction. Or would be confused.

At the last minute, we said, “Well, why don’t we flip it and put the officer and then Annie and then offstage is the choreographer and we’ll have the officer hold the dog and Annie will get between the dog and the owner. When she calls him, let the dog go and the dog is going to want to go to the owner and end up in Annie’s arms.” It solved the problem beautifully and it worked every night.

LINDSAY: It’s fascinating because it’s like these are the secret tips of working with animals. The whole notion of just having the floor different. If you’re going to use a real dog, get that dog in there early. I think that’s the big key.

MATT: Yes, as much preparation as you can give the dog, as much forewarning you can give the dog so that the dog understands the space, understands the people, the lights, the sounds, everything else. The more repetition the dog gets with that, the more comfortable the dog is going to be.

If you throw something at the dog at the last minute, the dog will react the way the dog will react. You cannot allow that sense of surprise to happen – not just for the dog and not just for the audience but for the actors – because, on the nights in rehearsal when the dog would begin to go afoul, Annie, her voice would start to tense up. You could hear her start to lose the melody because she’s so worried about making sure the dog does what the dog needs to do, and that’s a lot to put on an 11-year-old’s shoulder.

We wanted to do everything we could to solve those problems before they were problems.

LINDSAY: Last question. How do you think that directing this musical impacted you as a director? How did it change or improve what you’re looking for for your next gig as a director based on this show?

MATT: I typically don’t do musicals. I was asked to do this one, and I said yes because I love the opportunity and I love, as a director, to take on those challenges and that kind of advanced problem-solving that directing is. I really enjoyed the process.

To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t terribly familiar with the musical, Annie. I mean, they knew of it, they knew what it was about, but I’d never really listened to the soundtrack all the way through. So, hearing all of that and bringing kind of a fresh sense of “this is new to me” was really nice and really fun.

Towards that end, I would love to do that. Again, I would love the opportunity to be handed a script and a score that I’m not familiar with and start to break it down in the way that we did in this process because understanding all of the things that you need to do ahead of time and having a vision that you can then take and bring to the stage is a really exciting and wonderful feeling that you can get, especially when it turns out successfully which this one did.

LINDSAY: Oh, hey, now, I‘ve got one more question; I know we have listeners who do straight plays. Maybe they fear singing themselves. And so, they are afraid of doing musicals. So, as someone who just sort of got put in that position, what’s your piece of advice for someone who is afraid to direct a musical?

MATT: What I would say is put together a team of people who can help you put that musical on. If you don’t have the skills in music, if you don’t have the skills in choreography, don’t try to take that on yourself. It’s a lot to do. If you do everything a little bit good, you won’t do anything good.

Be able to concentrate on the things that you can do and do well. Once again, as a director, your idea is to bring vision to it – to coalesce all those pieces together and do a uniformed artistic piece. Having people who can support you in choreography, who can support your music, who you trust, who you like working with will make that process infinitely better.

Here’s the other thing. If you don’t feel comfortable with it, if you don’t think you can do those things successfully, don’t. There’s no reason that you should put yourself in a situation to set yourself up to fail, if you will.

Give yourself every opportunity you can to succeed and make it a success for you, your cast, and your audience.

LINDSAY: Awesome!

Thank you so much, Matt!

MATT: Thank you very much!

LINDSAY: Thank you, Matt!

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

So, you can find Matt all over Theatrefolk and throughout our education arm – the Drama Teacher Academy. Matt is our curriculum consultant for the DTA and he’s taught PD courses on the DTA site for classroom management, makeup, and concept-based set design.

But Matt is also a Theatrefolk playwright. We have two of his plays in our catalogue – The Myths at the Edge of the World which is a great place to start if you are looking for myths for your students other than ancient Greece; and The Perils of Modern Education for which, I’ll just say, there is a scene where Shakespeare tries to write a college essay.

(Spoiler alert! Will is not college material.)

You can find sample pages for these great plays at Theatrefolk.com or in the show notes which are at Theatrefolk.com/episode201.

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.