This is Maggie Perrino’s first year as the theatre teacher and director for Notre Dame Academy in Park Hills, Kentucky. She is a graduate of Miami University and will complete her Master of Arts in Teaching at Thomas More College in May 2013. Prior to accepting her current position, Maggie spent almost three years in the Educational Events department at the EdTA home office. She has more than twenty-five years of experience in dance and theatre and spends much of her free time choreographing or dancing in musicals for local Cincinnati theatres.
Playwriting unit
I want to start off this post with a major shout to the Georgia Thespians!
Recently, I started teaching a playwriting unit developed by the wonderful theatre educators in Georgia and my students are loving it! They didn’t expect to love it at first. In fact, when they looked at the syllabus and saw we had come to a writing unit, there was a deafening, collective groan from my sophomores. But instead of being boring and tedious, this writing unit is getting high marks from my students and the short scenes they have written so far have been stellar. The true genius of this unit is that it continually mixes improv exercises and writing. The improv activities suggested in the lessons fulfill a range of goals. Some help the students brainstorm, some activate prior knowledge, and some ask students to apply elements of plot or character to the improv scene. Then the writing activities scaffold off of the improv activities and slowly increase in length and depth until the students are ready to write their first play. I can’t wait to see what they come up with! Thanks to Frank Pruet for sending in this fantastic piece of curriculum to the home office and to Diane Carr for forwarding it to me!
Once again, the larger EdTA community helps this new girl become a better teacher!
All Comments
As I have expanded my passion for writing and learned a lot I have found many techniques for developing ideas and translating them to paper. Improv is one of the many techniques. I find a written form of improv in which students are instructed to write for 5-10 minutes non-stop about whatever is in their head. They can not edit as they write and they can't stop writing. This helps make the writer more open and in line with their creative juices.
Best way to get better at writing is to just write. A lot.
I'm glad to hear you are exposing people to playwriting because I feel like that is undervalued sometimes in High School theatre.
— Devon Roberts on January 29, 2013 at 4:06pm
And, at our Chapter conference next week, one of our Playworks winning plays from last year is being produced for an audience for the first time. Again, credit to the McClains and the winning student's director Betty Walpert for their vision and dedication to student achievement/recognition.
— Frank Pruet on January 29, 2013 at 4:52pm
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