Wicked

This highly imaginative musical features a fine book by Winnie Holzman and music and lyrics by one of Broadway’s most accomplished composers, Stephen Schwartz. Based on the novel by Gregory Maguire, Wicked will fill you with wonder as it takes

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Lighting the Stage When Using Projections

This video is not an official part of the Projections on Stage sequence, but it is an excellent additional resource.  It is intended to help people who are working their way into the use of scenic projections and might have only

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Theatre Hierarchy Handout 2021

In 2013, I posted a Theatre Hierarchy Handout.  It has been very popular because in addition to showing lines of reporting (like a tree), it also shows lines of communication.   It is also arranged to demonstrate performance vs. running

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Arts & Culture in 1899

An Alphabet of Celebrities was written and illustrated in 1899 by Oliver Herford, an American humorist. It is almost forgotten today, but it contains a wealth of names and characters worth exploring. There are about 83 names or characters mentioned

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Visual-Based Ice-Breakers

We use a lot of ice-breaker activities in theatre classrooms. These often included revealing information about one’s self or emoting in some way. You can surprise your students with either of the following two activities that do not require any

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Online Lighting Design Project

This is an open-education resource, like everything else on this site. It is a step-by-step lighting design project packaged as a PowerPoint file. The PowerPoint file can be downloaded here:  https://scenicandlighting.com/downloads/Light_Plot_Assignment.pptx Your students are instructed to edit the PowerPoint slides.

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Teaching Students to “Look It Up”9

Teaching Students to “Look It Up”

How much do you remember of your high school vocabulary lessons? You would write down your word lists, find the parts of speech, the definitions, and put each word into a sentence. This educational tool would help young students to

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Projections on Stage Part II: Making Good Use of Ordinary Projectors

This is part two of a series.   The first part is Projections on Stage Part I: How do I make them brighter?   Design the set around the screens It is easy to think of projections as being just the background

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Browser-Based Light Labs

Demonstrating theatrical lighting in an educational environment takes a lot of setup.  I have some standard lectures where I take my entire class down to one of our theatres and spend the class powering different instruments on and off while

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The Next-Generation Lightlab for Dance and Proscenium

In 2002, I created a set of browser-based light labs. These demonstrated the principals of lighting design, as well as creating an accessible place where people can experiment with light. There are some pros and cons to a browser-based lab.

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Spreading the Acting Bug to Scriptwriting!

Spreading the Acting Bug to Scriptwriting!

In my blog series, Spreading the Acting Bug, I’ve talked about my experiences working as a theatre teacher for young ones, marketing theatre classes in a non-profit atmosphere, and helping teachers find the right monologue books for actively auditioning kids.

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Media Platforms Helping Us to Reach Our Audiences and Our Broadway Idols

Developed in 2010, Instagram became one of the leading social media applications out there. The platform was bought by Facebook in 2012 but has become more widely used than its media owner, in that the coming generations of media sharers have switched

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Accessing Broadway: Learning experiences that bring life and light to the world of theatre.

Broadway Educators is hosted and maintained by All Tickets, Inc., which specializes in group experiences and educational theatre experiences in New York City. One of the services offered by All Tickets, Inc. is access to a huge range of workshops

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Broadway Musical NEWSIES: Themes for the Classroom

Musical NEWSIES on Broadway

History The musical NEWSIES is a dramatized, but overall accurate description of what life was like for children in the U.S. back in the mid-19th to early 20th centuries. The newspaper boys (aka the “newsies”) were the primary way that

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Teaching Mathematics in the Classroom through Theatre

Using theatre as a means to teach mathematical subjects makes class more interesting and enables greater learning for students. Theatrical approaches can be used for other educational subjects too, but as a former student who struggled in trying to understanding

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Design: Visual Narrative

Design: Visual Narrative

This exercise asks students to create a triptych that tells a story with a beginning, middle, and end. The three panels, which are developed as collages, must utilize the principles and elements of design. This is the sixth of 10

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Design: Music Composition

Design: Music Composition

In the fifth of 10 design aesthetics exercises from Auburn associate professor Fereshteh Rostampour, students are given the creative task of translating a 3 to 5 minute piece of music into a visual display. This is a wonderful mid-range exercise

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Design: Composition

Design: Composition

This design aesthetics exercise focusing on composition requires that students convey a focal point, asymmetrical balance, and movement. Students write a short story or develop a theme and then illustrate their central idea through collage. The point is to create

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Design: Color Wheel and Tones

Design: Color Wheel and Tones

This exercise, which is the third of 10 focusing on design aesthetics, demands that students create their own color wheel and tones. Tones are developed by using varying amounts of black and white. This is an exacting exercise from designer

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Design: Articulate with Lines

Design: Articulate with Lines

In this innovative exercise from theatre designer Fereshteh Rostampour, students are given 9 adjectives and they must draw lines to illustrate the emotion each evokes. Creativity, execution and presentation are all important in what is the second of 10 design

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Playwriting Exercise: A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

It’s not uncommon for writers to observe people in everyday life and get ideas for characters and even entire plays. This playwriting exercise offers 30 pictures of 30 different people. The assignment is to create a play creating and using

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Teaching Students Depression-era Themes in ANNIE

Annie the Musical History Depression FDR

A Bit of History ANNIE is a Broadway musical based upon the newspaper strip Little Orphan Annie, created by Harold Gray in 1924. The plot of the comic strip follows the adventures of Annie (who wanders throughout a world full

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