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Colin Oliver leads this introduction to teaching Musical Theatre in the Drama Classroom. In this course, you will learn how to build musical theatre into your dramatic courses of study. “Why might you want to do that? Singing is scary! You want me to teach my students how to do it? I don’t even know how to do it.” This course approaches musical theatre preparation performance much as we would approach preparing a monologue in drama. If you use script analysis in monologue preparation in your class, you can teach musical theatre. By the end of this course, you’ll have a great, full-body physical warm-up, a student-driven research assignment, character development exercises, a little bit of musical theory, and a performance assignment complete with assessment. So, join us for teaching Musical Theatre in the Drama Classroom. It’s as easy as Do-Re-Mi!

In this class, Serious Play, the instructor will lead you through a series of games in risk, movement, focus, and voice. You will get access to a series of all inclusive games that you can string together to make one giant game that is great to use in rehearsal. You will learn how and when to use these games. You'll get ideas on how to craft your own warm-up lesson plan; and, most importantly, you'll learn about about a pre-class warm-up that you can do on your own so that you can get yourself into that third stage of the creative brain, so that you can begin trying out interesting, creative, and risky choices for yourself in your classes and in rehearsals.

This collection of technical theatre mini-units will give you the opportunity to introduce lighting, sound, costuming, staging, and makeup into your program. Each mini-unit can be used independently, or you can build one upon the other toward the culminating project. These units were developed with middle school students (grades 6 to 8), and can also suit an introductory level high school class in tech theatre.

Producing a show together as a class is the ultimate in both project-based learning and using higher-order thinking skills. Students will gain experience in working in a group, time management, conflict resolution, and other interpersonal skills necessary to working as part of a creative team. By breaking down the production process into specific sections, you can ensure that your students have the necessary skills to produce a successful show. In addition, whereas trying to take a show from audition to performance usually feels rushed, The Production Classroom allows you to really dive deep into the production process. These units could easily be spaced out over the course of a semester or over the course of an entire year.

Instructor Karen Loftus has an impressive stage management resume, but she has also taught Stagecraft in a portable classroom. There was no lighting grid, no sound equipment, no place to build sets, props or costumes. This experience led to this curriculum: Stagecraft without a Theatre. Through exposure, exploration, and project-based learning, students identify and understand the various areas of technical theatre including scenic design, lighting, sound, costumes, and makeup. The curriculum culminates with a project where students work in groups to design and plan technical elements as they would for a production, and then simplify those designs to work in a classroom setting: Stagecraft without a Theatre.

Distance Learning is defined as synchronous activities in an online class session, with some asynchronous assignments to be completed and submitted. The curriculum offers the following units in a distance learning format. All of these units exist in a traditional drama classroom form on the Drama Teacher Academy site.

There are many ways to build a curriculum for the drama classroom. One of them is to base each unit in an era of theatre history and have students apply what they learn in a theatrical manner. This theatre history curriculum starts with Ancient Egypt, Sanskrit drama, and Indigenous storytelling, then moves on to Ancient Greek theatre, and ends with 19th century Romanticism. Feel free to adapt the units in this curriculum to fit your students and your situation. Or pick and choose different units to supplement your program. The goal of this curriculum is to focus on how students learn, how they plan, and strategies for their learning, and what social and emotional skills can be applied through discussion and effective and efficient group work. Refer to the Distance Learning guide for ideas on how to adapt this curriculum to a remote teaching or hybrid environment.

This is a curriculum for a scene study semester at the middle school level. The goal for each unit is to build off the knowledge and skills gained in the previous unit so students are gradually adding to their abilities as they progress through different types of scene performance assessments. Students begin with the acting basics they need to create a successful scene: ensemble skills, improvisation, projection, vocal clarity and expression, characterization, pantomime, objective and tactics. They will learn script structure, blocking, and stage directions and how to give, receive and apply feedback. They will explore aspects beyond acting such as directing and simple set design.

The Drama Two Curriculum is performance based. It has been developed to expand and deepen the students’ skills as artists. They will do so by building on material covered in the Drama One Curriculum, with units in: Character Analysis, Monologue Writing and Performance, Shakespeare Performance, and Design. The curriculum will culminate in a Devised Class Play.

This is a curriculum map for a comprehensive theatre class. The purpose of the curriculum is to give students an overview of theatre in general. The super objective of this course is to have students “bring it all together” at the end in a culminating project. The essential questions for the year: * What are the most important tools of the actor? * Who’s who in the theatre? The answer to the first question is mind, body, and voice. Each unit reflects one of those tools: pantomime—body, improvisation—mind, etc. The answer to the second is explored throughout the curriculum.

This lesson plan takes students through a variety of directing styles, asks them to assess each method, and then asks them to reflect on what’s most important when choosing a directing method. This is a great lesson to use for a directing class, or an advanced class that will be putting together their own scenes.

One approach to character development is to identify the difference between what characters want vs. what they need. Sometimes students get the two mixed up. Which is more important? Do plays always identify characters as having both? In this lesson plan, students identify the difference between want and need, then apply that knowledge with scenes/monologues.

Students explore how to trust themselves and work with others in improvisation through activities as well as playing games - Story Game, What are you doing?, and Press Conference.

Students explore Characterization and One Focus by participating in activities and playing Ding, Emotional Waiter and Party Quirks.

Students explore the importance and types of conflict as well as the importance of telling a complete story. Students will demonstrate their understanding of the rules of improvisation through their final performance in Freeze as well as a written quiz.

The Ancient Greek Theatre is the birth of the modern theatre. We can look at the production of theatre in that time and see similarities to how we present theatre today. But where do we start? And how do we make theatre history more than the collection of data?

Greek Theatre is the ancestor of the Modern Theatre. It is the birth of the actor stepping away from a chorus of unison speakers. The building of theatres. We can look at the production of theatre in that time and see similarities to how we present theatre today. But where do we start? And how do we make theatre history more than just the collection of data? In this lesson plan, students will explore the connection between the way they tell stories in the 21st century and the way that the Ancient Greeks told stories. Students will also explore Ancient Greek vases and Homer’s The Iliad.

In this lesson, students trace the journey from ancient storytelling to modern day theatre thousands of years later. One of the main reason theatre evolved like it did was because of performance opportunities during City Dionysus festivals in tribute to Dionysus. The performance framework moved from one person telling a story to a group, to a choral group performing, to one person stepping out in front of the chorus as an actor and so on. It’s interesting for students to see that the more you perform a form, the more that form evolves.

The Greek Theatre is the ancestor of the modern theatre. It is the birth of the actor stepping away from a chorus of unison speakers, as well as the catalyst that triggered the practice of building theatres. We can look at the production of theatre in that time and see similarities to how we present theatre today. But where do we start? And how do we make theatre history more than the collection of data? In this lesson plan, students will explore the connection between the past and present by asking the question, “Does the “where” affect performance?” Students will compare and contrast the modern stage with the Ancient Greek Amphitheatre.

The Greek Theatre is the birth of the modern theatre. It is the birth of the actor stepping away from a chorus of unison speakers, as well as the catalyst that triggered the building of theatres. We can look at the production of theatre in that time and see similarities to how we present theatre today. But where do we start? And how do we make theatre history more than the collection of data? In this lesson plan, students will explore the connection between “what” of Ancient Greek Theatre: tragedy, satyr, and comedy.