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Teaching Theatre Journal

Summer 2011

Table of Contents

In the same boat
Fishing for stories, from Alaska to Maine—and finding community along the way
By Julie York Coppens

More than two hundred young people participated in “Maine to Alaska: Swapping Fish Tales,” an arts-integrated learning project.

In the Same Boat Web Extra
More photographs of the Juneau production, and a script excerpt from Dear Fish.
Breaking with realism
Playwriting for the twenty-first century
By Michael Bigelow Dixon and Amy Wegener

How do you prepare students for a theatre that doesn’t exist yet? Here is a series of workshops and exercises meant to broaden students’ awareness of their own creativity and the rarely tapped potential of non-realistic theatre.

Breaking with Realism Web Extra
A dozen video selections explore non-realistic theatre styles, with discussion prompts for classroom use.
Coaching actors, directing the play
Eleven tools for rehearsal
By Joe Deer

Many theatre educators serve as both the acting coach and the director of school plays and musicals. Acting teachers build technique; directors apply it. Here are eleven coaching tools you can use with your students in rehearsal.

Write to understand
By building plays themselves, actors learn to stay on track
By Bruce Miller

Helping your students grasp and understand the elements playwrights use to create successful drama can help them discover and better use those elements in their interpretive work as actors.

Promptbook: Drama without borders
A theatre camp for teens in eastern Ukraine
By Natalie Shure

In two weeks time, Peace Corps volunteer Natalie Shure guides a group of teenagers in the Ukraine through process of writing, rehearsing, and performing a play in English.

News and Notes: A new coalition will revise the national arts education standards; Feds release reports, and the EdTA Board votes to expand.