Connecting with Young Artists via
Teaching
From New York to Pennsylvania, I have always loved teaching theatre to students of all ages. Whether it be as a stage manager, a director, or a facilitator of improv games, working with students has helped me become a better artist and leader. Two of my favorite teaching roles include working for the Albany branch of Drama Kids International and volunteering at Brigadier General Anna Mae Hays Elementary during my last semester of college.
Drama Kids International
As a Creative Dramatics and Acting Academy Teacher, I worked with 300 children aged 5-18 years across the Capital District in Upstate New York. I directed five productions of Footloose Youth Edition and three productions of a Drama Kids original play, The Cleanest Town in Texas. I also ran a daily one-hour improv workshop with the kids where they learned the rules of improv and of theatre as a whole. The students had a range of abilities with most being on the spectrum or never having performed before. We rehearsed in 5 different locations, 5 days a week from September to the first week in February when the shows were performed at the State University of New York at Albany. I led a team of 3-5 teachers and 2-4 student teachers depending on the location and created weekly lesson plans and a rehearsal schedule. I taught the music and choreography and blocked the show while also helping build the set and props and gathering costume pieces.
Theatre Arts at Hays Elementary
I ran an after-school theatre program for young students at Brigadier General Anna Mae Hays Elementary in Allentown, Pennsylvania. I championed a team of 5 other volunteers from Muhlenberg College and we met with the students once a week for an hour and a half for 10 weeks. During that time, we helped teach the students about the basics of theatre- the differences between downstage and upstage and stage right and stage left, the main rules of improv, and what it meant to create an interesting character onstage. I was in charge of creating lesson plans and each week had a theme with some being “Teamwork Makes the Dreamwork” where we worked on improvs that rely on your fellow actors to help reveal your given circumstances, “Physicality is Fun” in which every activity involved some form of physical comedy or interesting movement, and “Bigger is Better” where each student had to perform with big emotions and using big choices. We created masks which we used in short skits we collaborated on and I taught small workshops on costume design, stage makeup, and character design.
