Theatre makers have managed to find a way to create art all through the pandemic virtually. With Spring in our reach, it’s time to get out from behind the Zoom screen and out in the open air for some outdoor theatre. Have the perfect play? Eyeing your location? We have you covered on planning your successful #outdoortheatrewin.
Planning an open-air production this Spring or Summer? Stage Partners Education Director Maria McConville connected with Outdoor Theatre Veteran and Artistic Director of Shakespeare on the Sound, Claire Kelly, who shares her To-Do list for creating a successful outdoor production.
With this new adaptation comes new lesson plans! Peter Royston’s 3 Lesson Plans were created specifically for his adaptation of A Wind in the Door by Madeleine L’Engle. These lessons will round out an ensemble’s experience rehearsing this play or help students get solid grasp of the script when analyzing in class. And best of all, they’re absolutely free to download and use.
Theater teacher and playwright Nina Mansfield talks about her virtual adaptation of an ancient classic, ANTIGONE: 3021, with Stage Partners Education Director Maria McConville. Find out how Mansfield adjusted her Fall Play to a virtual setting and what she thinks about this new way of creating theater.
Photos from the Harrison High School production of Anitgone: 3021,
At the end of her script, I HATE VALENTINE’S DAY, playwright Sonya Sobieski, offers some thoughtful questions for drama teachers to pose to their student cast. We thought it would be helpful to bring these questions to the front, so theatre directors and teachers could bring them to drama class.
Playwright and Teaching Artist Will Quam talks about his new play REUNION (AFTER THE END OF THE WORLD) with Education Director, Maria McConville. Find out Quam’s inspiration for this beautiful full-length drama that explores the resilience of children in the face of the unimaginable.
We asked playwright and Drama teacher, Alan Haehnel, what he looks for in a production of one of his scripts. His new play MARGARET CRADEMEIR’S CATALOGUE OF MINOR YET HELPFUL UNCANNY ABILITIES is a female driven, large cast play that will be an exciting ride for an ensemble of adventurous young thespians. Find inspiration from the playwright himself as you dive in to this one-act comedy.
Playwright Don Zolidis shares what he's learned about writing and adapting plays for Zoom in this new essay series. Find out how to get your students creating amazing digital theater and virtual productions with these tips!
Whether it’s middle school theater class or the high school play, practicing theater in school helps guide us through all of the ups and downs that life brings us. The year 2020 has forced so many of our young people to grow-up quickly. Our relationship with time has certainly been altered. Since March 2020, there were points the months seemed like years, or was that just me? The major events the world has experienced has had many focus in on what is important; family, love, and what we do with our time. So many of us had to experience the loss of those we hold dear in a way that is not easily explained.
Meet Rene BeVier Dill. She is a mom of three and a middle school theater teacher in Colorado who is making the most of teaching theater online. Before teaching middle school, Rene was a Teaching Artist in NYC and a high school theater teacher in Colorado with over 17 years of experience. When our nation’s teachers had to turn on a dime and start teaching virtually, Rene wrote her whole spring e-learning curriculum around the Stage Partners play THE DAY THE INTERNET DIED using our PDF Script Pack. Not only were we flattered, we wanted to know how she did it!
Here, Rene shares some of her Distance Learning tricks and a couple of her wonderful lessons with Education Director, Maria
It's election season once again, so we thought we would catch up with playwright Ian McWethy and talk to him about his hilarious play EVERY U.S. ELECTION EVER!
Since the 2020 election might be on your students minds— and on yours— this play offers a positive and laugh-out-loud way to get them thinking about America's democratic process (and maybe even helping them get excited about their history homework while you're at it!).
If the Pandemic has given us theater teachers anything, it has given us the opportunity to have our students focus on fundamentals. So often in pre-"shelter-in-place" times, we were just so busy with all of the moving pieces of putting up a show. How we wished we had more time to do a deep dive into technique, theater history, and play analysis! Well that time is now: Enter, Distance Learning.
One of the fundamental building blocks of being a theater practitioner is knowing the work of William Shakespeare. Love him or hate him, you have to back
The Pandemic can have us feeling a bit at sea when it comes to gearing up for the new school year. Is it just me? New parameters are being set for doing what we have done, instinctually, for so long. Teachers are having to dig down deep to develop their curriculum this Fall. The creativity we are seeing from theater educators, not surprisingly, knows no bounds!
Pre-pandemic, we met a teacher who was making creative choices for her students habitually. Patty MacMullen has taken the reigns when she has needed to. When she couldn’t find the right piece for her particular group of students, she made it herself. The truth of that piece resonated and now we
We’re going back to school… or maybe we’re not going back in-person, it’s all online… or maybe we’re in school but we are social distancing…
This is not an easy time to plan if you are a theater teacher. As you begin to develop your plans for in-school, home-school and everything in between, Stage Partners wants to be a resource to you. Using a play from our catalogue as a starting point and developing lessons around it can help keep the love of theater alive until we can all congregate for a live performance once again.
As we all know since March of 2020, life changes on a dime. No matter the moment, in peacetime or in paradigm shifts, it is teachers that are helping students navigate the ups and downs, the how and the why. Throughout the school shut down, we have worked closely with theater teacher Emily Hageman, discussing best practices and how to deal with the constraints of teaching theater remotely.
Here, Emily shares her mindset through these past months and offers a glimmer of hope for where this experience will take us.
A few months ago, the world was upended. I remember the day after
