Above Image: from G.T. production of "A Christmas Carol"
*** The plays my elementary students require adaptation for children and become, in a sense, an adaptation of a grown up play tweaked for kids.
The plays my elementary students perform require adaptation for children. Typically, I have written our plays or parts of our plays so that each child, regardless of their age, experiences a REAL role and are not simply someone standing in the background. Our plays are always connected to what we are learning that year in G.T. and are directed toward affective development. Most children in elementary school --especially in rural districts --have never seen a play, especially one with actors who look like them. Schools often do not have the means or the money to take elementary students to theater productions. As a result, our plays are FREE. At the performances where parents come, we do take donations to help us pay for our expenses. The purpose of all that we do is to get kids interested in theater, revealing an area they might want to participate in during high school --it is to create a love for acting and a stage and costumes and all that goes with it so that someday they will be theatergoers who find great joy in the stories they see on the stage. It is also to develop self-confidence, public speaking, responsibility, and perseverance --all BIG in today's world.
*** The plays my elementary students require adaptation for children and become, in a sense, an adaptation of a grown up play tweaked for kids.
The plays my elementary students perform require adaptation for children. Typically, I have written our plays or parts of our plays so that each child, regardless of their age, experiences a REAL role and are not simply someone standing in the background. Our plays are always connected to what we are learning that year in G.T. and are directed toward affective development. Most children in elementary school --especially in rural districts --have never seen a play, especially one with actors who look like them. Schools often do not have the means or the money to take elementary students to theater productions. As a result, our plays are FREE. At the performances where parents come, we do take donations to help us pay for our expenses. The purpose of all that we do is to get kids interested in theater, revealing an area they might want to participate in during high school --it is to create a love for acting and a stage and costumes and all that goes with it so that someday they will be theatergoers who find great joy in the stories they see on the stage. It is also to develop self-confidence, public speaking, responsibility, and perseverance --all BIG in today's world.
How can you possibly do theater with children ages 7 - 12, and WHY do you do it? It all begin with a group of high school girls in 2010, a valuable lesson I learned about the power of theater for students, and a woman named Charlotte Delbo...
