Oh boy. (And sorry for the threadjack)
I would love to see:
Noises Off
Vanya and Sonia and Sasha and Spike
She Kills Monsters
Lend me a Tenor (or Leading Ladies)
The Taming
Harvey maybe?
Brighton Beach Memoirs
There's a million of them. I'm sure other people have equally wonderful suggestions that kids would jump into. I'm not saying we should only teach comedy, but I think we NEED to teach some comedy. If you think about the reasons we read "literature in school":
--to foster and develop reading ability through reading complex material
--knowledge of a cultural tradition
--development of critical thinking skills through script analysis
All of these are equally fulfilled by a fun, engaging, difficult comedy. I think English teachers have taken over our art form (and I was an English teacher) and teach plays like they were novels, focusing on works hundreds of years old by dead people - If we teach plays like museum pieces, don't be surprised if people view theatre as a dead artifact and not a living, breathing art form.
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Don Zolidis
Austin TX
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Original Message:
Sent: 04-18-2018 13:10
From: Josh Kauffman
Subject: Books and plays taught in high school and middle school
Good point. Any titles and/or playwrights you would suggest?
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Josh Kauffman
Teacher
Winfield AL
Original Message:
Sent: 04-18-2018 11:54
From: Don Zolidis
Subject: Books and plays taught in high school and middle school
I love you guys, but -
DOES ANYONE TEACH A COMEDY WRITTEN IN THE PAST 100 years?
Why can't we teach comedy in schools? Why do we think kids are going to think theatre is something other than an old, grim, miserable art form? PLEASE - teach comedy.
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Don Zolidis
Austin TX
Original Message:
Sent: 04-18-2018 10:51
From: Amy Bussey
Subject: Books and plays taught in high school and middle school
Here we do the following. Not all of these are taught in all classes, as there are some differences in levels:
9th Grade: Night, Romeo and Juliet, Great Expectations, The Odyssey, The Miracle Worker (moving away from this)
10th Grade: Julius Caesar or Othello, Antigone, Oedipus Rex, The Things they Carried, Fahrenheit 451, The Great Gatsby, A Separate Peace,
11th Grade: The Grapes of Wrath, Huckleberry Finn, A Raisin in the Sun, The Glass Menagerie, The Glass Castle, 12 Angry Men, The Scarlet Letter, The Crucible, tons of early American stuff, Touching Spirit Bear (remedial level only)
12th Grade: Hamlet and/or MacBeth, The Canterbury Tales, Beowulf, 1984, Animal Farm, Brave New World, Everything is Illuminated
I use a bunch more in my Drama classes, of course, but this is the standard English curriculum. There are other books that individual teachers use as well.
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Amy Bussey
Stuarts Draft VA
Original Message:
Sent: 04-16-2018 22:53
From: Jason Brown
Subject: Books and plays taught in high school and middle school
Hello everyone,
I am looking at getting as many lists as I can of books and plays taught in middle and high school English classes.
Thanks!
Jason Brown | Director of Education
Guthrie Theater | 818 South 2nd Street
Minneapolis, MN 55415 | www.guthrietheater.org
C: 612.987.1864 | W: 612.225.6133