Creativity is Contagious

Do your students need a crash course in good audience etiquette? Perhaps you are taking them on a field trip to a play or symphony. Perhaps they need to learn to be respectful of each other during class presentations. Here is an easy lesson plan to help students identify respectful and disrespectful audience behavior.Included:Question of the day (students get really fired up about this one!)Two (2) slideshows featuring fun gifs and a few theater jokes to demonstrate the difference between ter

Have you ever wondered if you could tell when someone is fake smiling? Do you wish you could better tell if someone is lying or how they are feeling? After these lessons you will!The Duchenne smile refers to a real smile, created involuntarily. To begin, you and your students will study smiles and how they affect the entire face. There are seven universal facial expressions, and you will next discover how faces are affected by anger, sadness, disgust, surprise, fear, and contempt. Included:DUCH

How can you address your students' performance anxiety? And how can you have fun while doing it?!This fun and thorough lesson engages students of all ages and teaches what stage fright is, common physical and mental symptoms, the most common causes and how to combat them, grounding techniques, warm ups, and how to create a pre-show ritual that truly works for you. Included is a slideshow containing information, definitions, links to articles and videos, and activities and games for practice and

How do you teach students to block themselves or others? How can you help them read and create groundplans? A common challenge for new actors and directors is the concept of blocking. How can you move in space in a way that makes sense with the script, is visible to the audience, and helps to tell the story? How do you mark this movement in your script? How can you use a groundplan as a map and create one yourself?This engaging lesson covers all of this and more! It is an excellent introd

This lesson plan is perfect for introducing or reviewing areas of the stage with elementary, middle, or high school students. It is simple, yet active and engaging, and will leave your students familiar with stage right, stage left, upstage, downstage, levels and basic areas of the stage.This plan includes:suggested question of the day/journal promptslideshowinstructions for two (2) physical activities/gamesa Kahoot review game that coordinates with the slideshow.The slideshow can also be assig

Use this slideshow live or asynchronously with a class or individually. These methods work for those new to memorization or anyone who wants to memorize more quickly and efficiently.Includes descriptions of classic and modern methods of memorization as well as articles and video links with further explanation, examples, and ideas. It also gives tips for solidifying memorization, refining your memorization so you are word perfect, and instructions on how to be on book and how to use someone on

This slideshow invites students to share about themselves while reinforcing terminology for the areas of the stage. Get to know your class better while teaching important vocabulary for the theater classroom! Includes: Written InstructionsVideo InstructionsTemplateFully completed exampleThis activity can be completed as homework or individual classwork. Students also enjoy sharing their finished products with one another.

This acting activity is great for students exploring imagery, visualization, or those studying how setting affects characterization. This slideshow includes directions for the acting exercise, Through the Looking Glass. It takes students through six very different settings, encouraging physical, mental, and emotional imagery. They are asked to reflect on each experience. It concludes with three general questions for reflection. This slideshow can be projected in front of the classroom and com

Do your students need more guidance when they rehearse a scene for class? Do they just do the scene over and over, or worse, sit around and do nothing saying they're "done"?This resource fixes this problem! Students often have little to no experience directing themselves and have a hard time knowing where to start (and where to go after that!). This slideshow breaks down rehearsal time into simple, scaffolded steps. For each step, students are asked to answer questions/reflect, so teachers c

This is a super fun and universally interesting lesson for a multitude of subjects! Have you ever wondered if you could tell when someone is fake smiling? After this lesson, you will! The Duchenne smile refers to a real smile, created involuntarily. In this lesson, you and your students will study smiles and how they affect the entire face. Included:Question of the Day/Journal PromptLinks to examples of real and fake smiles with suggested questionsSlideshow activity for guessing which smiles

This slideshow takes students through the exercise, Stronger and Stronger. This exercise asks students to identify vague or weak statements in order to make them stronger. Characters have specific traits, not general ones. No one is merely old. You cannot play "old". A character is a specific age that an actor can portray. This exercise strengthens characterization and descriptive skills.The slideshow can be shown in front of the class and the exercise can be performed alone or as a group.

This activity reinforces:Committing to your objectiveImagery and visualizationHow setting affects movementRaising the stakesThis slideshow walks students through the activity, "Walk the Line", which encourages students to use imagery skills to visualize an imaginary line which they physically walk across. As the stakes rise, students will find that they are physically, mentally, and emotionally affected. Students are asked to reflect at each stage and the slideshow concludes with a final reflec

This exercise reinforces:RelationshipImageryCharacterizationIn this exercise, actors are asked to envision how their character would react to others. They will consider their relationship and their character. I have also used this activity successfully comparing and contrasting their character's responses and relationships to their own.The slideshow can be used in front of the class and the activity can be performed as a group or individually. This can also be assigned as individual work/home

As theater/theatre/drama teachers, we do lots of fun, interactive getting to know you activities and games. But what do we do with students who are more comfortable writing than speaking when they first join our class? What about when we have to meet virtually or cannot all meet in the same physical space? This activity solves this problem in a very approachable way. Students create their own slides introducing themselves and can view the slides of their classmates. Encourage commenting and