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Teaching Theatre Journal

Fall 2011

Table of Contents

Pairing up
Better scene work in seven steps
By Tracey Moore

Seven steps your student actors can follow that can help them make better choices in their scene work.

Drop, travel, or hoist
Creating lightweight fabric scenery is easy, fun, and safe
By Sean O'Skea

If your school's theatre space features a fly system, you are fortunate. But the truth is, you don't need a fly system to create interesting scenery.

Web extra: Drop, travel, or hoist
The power of Tom
How Harriet Beecher Stowe’s landmark novel became the play that changed America
By David S. Reynolds

The anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin became an international phenomenon after it was published in 1852. It was the best-selling novel of the nineteenth century and played an important role in mobilizing both sides of the Civil War. When the novel was adapted into a play, during its peak in the 1870s, more than five hundred companies toured the country presenting “Tom shows,” many to audiences who had never experienced a theatrical performance. This excerpt from Mightier Than the Sword: Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Battle for America explores the impact Uncle Tom’s Cabin had on mass entertainment and race relations.      

Web extra: The power of Tom
Breaking with realism, part two
Playwriting exercises focusing on expressionism and altered states
By Michael Bigelow Dixon and Amy Wegener

In this second article of a series introducing students to non-realistic theatre, the authors offer exercises exploring how expressionism and altered states can bring subjective aspects of the human experience to the stage.

Web extra: Breaking with realism, part one
Promptbook: Mentoring a Millennial
A director goes the distance with a student playwright
By Cary Barney

When a teacher offers to direct a student playwright’s new play, the road to production winds through challenges that neither had anticipated. This chronicle of how an idea became a play and a learning experience for the teacher, the playwright, and the cast details the rich give-and-take collaboration that a new play experience can offer everyone on its way to opening night.

News and Notes
EdTA and Utah State University launch a new survey of secondary theatre education in the United States, and the rewrite of the National Standards for Arts Education begins first steps in the revision process.