| EDUCATION
ACPN
Program Through LAUSD | Middle School Playwrighting
Program
ACPN
(Arts Community Partnership Network) Program through LAUSD
Theatre West five
day sequential educational program utilizes California State Visual And
Performing Arts Standards for Grades K -2, followed by two performances
of our award winning Storybook
Theatre. (Teachers and Administrators go to the LAUSD
OMAR page for specifics re performance and residency fees.)
Storybook
Theatre presents interactive, non-threatening, live musicals with
a message, under VAPA standards, performed by professional actors. According
to Joe Garber at Actors Equity Assn, Theatre West’s Storybook
Theatre is one of only two companies in Los Angeles performing for
children under a union contract, and is one of the highest impact children’s
theaters in the US, serving more than 8,000 students a year.
Called the “Best
in the West for the squirmy set” by Los Angeles Magazine and “simply
the best at what they do” by the Los Angeles Times, Storybook
Theatre also won the 2007 Parent Survey in LA Parent Magazine as Best
Children’s Theatre in Los Angeles.
As part of that effort
to more fully extend our work into the educational needs of the children,
we worked with credentialed teachers who are company artist members to
create a series of exercises that we could bring to schools as a five
day residency program for grades K-2 that met the five VAPA standards
at each grade level.
What they said about
Theatre West’s ACPN
Residency at Hancock Park ES:
"The actor/teachers
from Theatre West bring a vital and electric energy into the classroom
that seems to ignite the student's creative juices!"
"Their
style of classroom management shows an intuitive sensitivity to each
student's hidden fears as well as their ability to be brave."
"As
a participating classroom teacher, I feel more confident to use new
theater techniques in conjunction with my Open Court stories and units."
"My
students were so engaged and excited during the sessions with Theatre
West that the classroom seemed to become one functioning organism...the
actor/teachers guiding my students to moments of excitement and to moments
of quiet."
~ Cecile Cabeen,
Teacher, and Dr. Judy Perez, Principal
Theatre
West’s Middle School Playwriting Program
Chris DiGiovanni and Doug Haverty, initiators and instructors
John Gallogly, Executive Director
A playwriting program
for Middle School students – sixth, seventh, eighth grades –
to facilitate the writing of short plays – 1 to 20 minutes in
length – and to teach the students and their schools about the
world of theater from the writer’s perspective. Plays would be
performed by student actors, with Theatre West professional directors
brought in for the final two weeks. At the end of the program, all the
plays written will be produced in public staged and directed readings
at the school during an assembly, so all students may see what their
classmates accomplished.
Basic structure:
Over a six month period, there would be 20 weekly in school or after
school meetings, two days a week, two hours each day, followed by two
weeks to prepare for the staged readings.
1st week: Instructor
introductions, program explanations, basic idea – a themed topic,
such as “the year of water conservation” or “the
year of environment protection,” or perhaps something that has
happened at the school, or in the students’ lives, and then
writing instructions are given, and the exploratory writing begins.
2nd – 10th
weeks: Develop the plays being written, have students read them in
class or after school, explain how to comment and make comments on
their peers’ work, all while working on playwriting basics –
structure, character, action, etc. – while they learn the rewrite
process.
11th week: Student
playwrights meet with directors, hold auditions and cast each play.
Technical team sets lighting trees. Minimum wardrobe, makeup, sets,
props, and lighting are put in place.
12th week: Rehearsals
and the culminating staged readings over a four-day period (Thursday-Sunday)
– dependent upon the number of scripts written – to ensure
that each play is given two public performances.
After the last
staged reading, there will be an award ceremony where the students
and the school are honored for participating, but no "winner"
is chosen.
During the time
period affected, Participating students and classmates would be bused
to Theatre West to see a professional production.
Theatre West will
provide books on playwriting and published plays to the school’s
library.
The costs of this
program may be covered by a grant which is pending. However, LAUSD
facilities overhead and teacher salaries would need to be the responsibility
of the school.
Now in its 46th
year Theatre West is Los Angeles’ oldest company theater. Our
original productions have traveled to Broadway and become films. Our
work has won Obie, Ovation, NAACP Image Awards, been honored by the
BBC Scotland, ADA Awards, and Los Angeles Drama Circle Critics’
Awards.
ACPN
Program Through LAUSD | Middle School Playwrighting
Program |
