List of Contributions

RE: BiPOC scenes & plays for high school

Posted By Jeff Grove 04-17-2024 08:59
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Specifically for Cassy's situation, I would suggest Spinning Into Butter by Rebecca Gilman, available from Dramatic Publishing. The cast is mostly white, but the play turns on a college student's identification as Nuyorican. A dean at the college wants to recommend the student for a scholarship designated ...

RE: Graduation Cords

Posted By Jeff Grove 02-23-2024 08:24
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Troupe 3929 Stanton College Preparatory School Jacksonville, FL Despite our fancy-schmancy-sounding name, we are a public school, though we are a district-wide academic magnet school, typically having a 100% graduation rate and virtually 100% of graduates going on to college, so honor societies ...

RE: Memorization

Posted By Jeff Grove 02-08-2024 08:28
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Erika offers some very good advice. I often use a digital recorder to record my scenes in a show, so I can review lines off-script at any time without the need for a human assistant reading "the other lines." On the type/write point, I would note - in this age where our students seem almost allergic ...

RE: Scenes needed

Posted By Jeff Grove 02-01-2024 09:27
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I sometimes tell my students that this is the "Holy Grail" of theatre teachers - scenes or songs for three or more women. Seems like most of us have mostly female students, while a lot of the literature involves mostly male casts. Sometimes as a community of theatre teachers, we feel honor-bound to let ...

RE: New Fine Arts Building Plans?

Posted By Jeff Grove 12-11-2023 09:54
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Wow. This has been a very helpful and informative discussion to follow from the sidelines, and I hope that it continues. I've been working for 39 years with a substandard auditorium that was short-changed because, when it was built, this was a Black school in a segregated school district. (Schools ...

RE: Digital Playbill

Posted By Jeff Grove 10-18-2023 11:29
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I understand the reasons why many theatres today are using digital programs, and they're perfectly valid. Consider this, however: I don't own a mobile phone, and while I'm not John Q. Everyone, I'm not alone, either. (Life is much simpler back here in the Cretaceous Period, barring the occasional T-Rex ...

RE: How do I get permission for a dog in LAUSD...

Posted By Jeff Grove 08-23-2023 10:59
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I agree with CJ's extra advice, in the event that you end up being able to use a real dog. I used my best friend's dog in Six Characters in Search of an Author, where the character known as the Leading Lady has a little dog that she pampers. My friend was a bit of an animal expert, and had even worked ...

RE: Stage blood that doesn't fade to pink?

Posted By Jeff Grove 07-06-2023 15:57
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I've never used commercial stage blood in a show. I teach my students how to make it themselves, and they have a lot of fun with it. I never have trouble recruiting a prop crew for a show that uses blood! (Most recent experience: The Women of Lockerbie, this past school year.) It's just a mix of red ...

RE: Lord of the Flies

Posted By Jeff Grove 05-24-2023 11:41
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Actually, with well-known intellectual property that is still under copyright, such as Lord of the Flies, you're not very likely to find multiple adaptations. Novelists (and their estates, if they've passed on) usually don't want to get tangled up in that. We now have two stage adaptations of To Kill ...

RE: Marian, Or the True Tale of Robin Hood original vs. Teen Edition

Posted By Jeff Grove 05-08-2023 08:19
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And you might want to be aware that even the teen version was recently shut down at a high school in Indiana, though there are conflicting accounts as to why it was done, and the students went on to crowd-fund an off-campus performance. Keep your particular administrative and community standards in mind. ...

RE: Tech and Female-Dominant Cast

Posted By Jeff Grove 04-21-2023 08:47
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A couple of us recently posted a suggestion in another thread that you might have missed, recommending Deborah Brevoort's The Women of Lockerbie, published by Dramatists Play Service/Broadway Licensing. It has a female-heavy cast which even the playwright suggests expanding by dividing certain roles ...

RE: What to the cord colors mean?

Posted By Jeff Grove 04-21-2023 08:34
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My troupe uses the royal blue and gold. These same colors are used by several other groups, most notably the National Honor Society. To differentiate ours, before I give them to our seniors, I twine one cord around the other, creating a spiral effect, and then tie them off at each end. This way, even ...

RE: In Class One Act

Posted By Jeff Grove 04-12-2023 09:09
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I second the Women of Lockerbie motion. I directed the show with my troupe this year, and my students responded beautifully to it. I'm old enough to remember the Lockerbie crash as news, but it happened long before my students were born. I was able to find a 50-minute TV documentary about the incident ...

RE: Question Bank for Student Directors

Posted By Jeff Grove 04-04-2023 09:37
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Some of my tried-and-trues ... Why did you choose to direct this piece? Why did you cast these actors in these roles? What about the process struck you as particularly easy (especially if that surprised you)? What about the process struck you as particularly difficult (again, especially if that surprised ...

RE: Wednesday Wisdom

Posted By Jeff Grove 02-16-2023 11:16
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Loved this. All great teachers, including (maybe especially?) theatre teachers, teach a lot more than their subject-specific curricula. It's called "life." Thanks for the reminder! ------------------------------ Jeff Grove Theatre Teacher, Aesthetics Department Chair Stanton College Prep FL ------ ...

RE: Playscripts's Mandatory Script Purchase Policy

Posted By Jeff Grove 02-13-2023 14:53
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I'll weigh in as another Playscripts author (and working theatre teacher), having been with the company from the beginning. Its co-founders are former students of mine, who even pitched early business models to me to see how they would play to teachers out in the field, and asked me questions about what ...

RE: Sleeping Beauty Stage Kiss

Posted By Jeff Grove 01-13-2023 09:06
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After my first "kiss issue" in a school play, I came up with a procedure that has largely headed off such problems ever since. When a play contains a kiss that is necessary to the story, and when that kiss really needs to be seen by the audience, I ask on the audition form if the students and their parents ...

RE: Neil Simon stuff not accepted?

Posted By Jeff Grove 11-02-2022 14:35
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I seem to recall that Simon himself didn't allow cuttings from his plays to be performed, and that that stricture remains in place after his death - unless whoever controls the rights to his plays ever changes his/her/their mind(s). Someone please correct me if I'm wrong about this. ------------------------------ ...

RE: Something like Godspell...

Posted By Jeff Grove 11-03-2020 14:34
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My troupe co-director staged Godspell several years ago, and there was no push-back in our public school district. The show isn't as sectarian as some people think it is, since it focuses on the essential themes of Jesus' parables rather than on any denominations' specific teachings about Jesus. We ...

RE: Monologues from Shakespearean Comedies

Posted By Jeff Grove 09-29-2020 08:17
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I like this website, and have been using it with my students. https://www.shakespeare-monologues.org/home Once you click on either "The Men" or "The Women," you'll see a list of the plays, divided into genres (although they lump the "romances" in with the comedies). What I especially like about ...

Jeff Grove

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