Theatre in the Classroom Workshop

I thoroughly enjoyed the day that Dr. Emert planned for our group on January 21st. The morning and afternoon workshop were filled with visits from local theater professionals. Who knew we would spend the morning out of our chairs creating special "superhero" hand motions to share with the group or saving each other from disastrous situations using our budding improvisational bravado?!? These improvisational techniques are excellent tools to use not only as ice breakers and to create community within the classroom, but could be easily adapted to assist students in analyzing and understanding content in new and creative ways. How one could do this is only limited by the imagination. These kind of exercises literally get students out of their chairs and connected to content. These are the sort of activities that students will leave the classroom and tell their peers about. "Hey, did you hear what we did in Ms. Pate's class? That was pretty cool." What could be better?

Meeting different theater folks in the community was also extremely useful. Our visitors from Dad's Garage and The Shakespeare Tavern really opened my eyes as to the resources available to theater aficionados in Atlanta. In high school, I was somewhat involved in theater and very involved in musical theater, so the value of these experiences is not lost on me. I was part of the "theater crowd." It is interesting to think about how performing theater as a venue and experience has changed over the past (gasp) 20 years. With the advent digital media and the internet, why and how is theater still a viable and important experience for students today? Is it that the medium has changed, the way people receive the message, not the content itself? I think these are important questions to ask ourselves as educators and to have our students explore.

I suppose one for the key ideas that stayed with me at the end of the workshop day was something that we discussed at length as a group: the importance of being a creator as opposed to a consumer. Isn't that at the core of what learning is all about? Isn't that what we want our students to be: active creators of their lives and experiences, as opposed to letting life just "happen" to them? I think inviting these theatrical techniques into our classrooms, takes us one step closer to making our students creators, not just consumers.