British Columbia (2018)
GRADE 11 - DRAMA - Connect and expand

Whether you're in a new school or have an existing program, you can use a Mission Statement to define your program, unify your students and let everyone know from administration, to parents, to the community why you do theatre, what you do and how you do it. Learn how to create this powerful and vital statement with your students. Mission Possible takes you through step by step from asking the right questions, to looking at your school culture and traditions, to writing and revising, to shouting your statement from the rooftops.

Instructor Kerry Hishon is an actor, director, writer, and stage combatant with years of experience in youth theatre. Her course, Theatre Etiquette 101, is designed to help students be successful in their theatrical journeys. When teaching students who are brand new to theatre, it’s important to discuss and apply the expectations of the drama classroom and the theatrical world. This course starts by explaining "what is theatre etiquette", and then moves through every step in the production process from audition to post-show recovery. Every module has tips for both you and your students, classroom exercises, rehearsal exercises, and reflections. There are also printable posters included to use in your classroom or backstage.

Shakespeare is one of the greatest resources a drama teacher can have: scenes packed with action; opportunities to explore comedy and physical theatre; rich themes and characters to act as springboards for devised theatre; the chance to work with our language at its finest and – most importantly – ideas that relate directly to the experiences and preoccupations of students. Yet Shakespeare isn’t easy. The language can seem dense, and finding a way in can be tough – especially for drama teachers who have not themselves studied Shakespeare. That’s the goal of this course – to help teachers find a way in. This course presents teachers with as many ways in to the exploration of Shakespeare as possible. Action scenes, themes, characters, different theatre styles, and devised theatre projects. Students will be armed with the tools they need to begin individually exploring monologues, or working together on scenes.

Who says theatre history has to be boring? Hands-On Theatre History: Creating a Modern Day Morality play is an interactive course by Wendy-Marie Martin, combining hands-on activities with research and analysis techniques leading to a full performance of the popular medieval morality play, Everyman. This course gives students an overview of the medieval period and the various medieval play forms and teaches students the key points of storytelling and adaptation. It includes dynamic individual and group exercises leading students from the first steps of the adaptation process through a final, full-class performance of Everyman—and proves, once and for all, that theatre history can be fun and exciting to learn.

In this course, James Van Leishout explores why students should direct, and covers the first two tools in the director’s toolbox: self and the script. What background should every director have? Why should they learn to love research? What should happen in the first four reads of a script? With every step along the way, there will be exercises and activities your student directors can take on before they step into the rehearsal process.

This course is a mix of individual and group activities requiring students to use both their analytical and creative mind. It gives students an overview on the Anti-Realism movement of the late-19th and early-20th century, and introduces them to some key theorists, playwrights, and theater makers involved in this movement. Together we will guide students through the wild world of the “isms,” more specifically Symbolism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Expressionism and Absurdism. We will introduce students to various manifestos and theories as we track the characteristics of each of our five “isms.” As we combine analysis and creative exercises, students bring their entire self to process and prepare to design an ISM Theme Park project, which they will share with the class at the end of the course.

Screenwriter Nick Pappas leads a two-part course on screenplays 101. Great scriptwriting is not something that can be covered in a single course: so we're going to start with the basics. Those basics are going to be split up into a Part 1 and a Part 2. Part 1, this course, will concentrate on basic film structure. Part 2 will concentrate on screenplay formatting. By the end of this course, students should have a basic understanding of history, terminology, and are able to identify the barest bones of the three-act structure, all with an eye toward developing their own screenplay.