Open Forum

What plays do you read with your Theatre 1 class and why?  Any titles that offer diversity?

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James Thomas Bailey
Director of Theatre Arts
Justin-Siena HS, Napa CA
Artistic Director, CSz Los Angeles
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First off, I use YOUR book for improvisation and it has been phenomenal! Thank you so much!

Second year teacher here building a curriculum from scratch. For Drama 1, I was kind of stuck with my first two plays based on what I had available before ordering titles for later in the year, but I ended up really liking them and kept them this year. We cover:

• Brief selections from Luis Alfaro's Greek adaptation trilogy during our Greek unit
• The Glass Menagerie
• Pygmalion/My Fair Lady
• Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 by Anna Deavere Smith and The Laramie Project in a unit on verbatim theatre
• The King of the Yees by Lauren Yee. She is an alum of my school, so there's that connection (and if you're in the Bay Area you might be able to make that too). In addition, I love the themes in this one, my kids seemed to love it. and it is wildly meta theatrical, which is tricky but rewarding to teach.

Hope this helps!

Tim

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Tim Sullivan
Drama Teacher
Lowell High School
San Francisco, CA
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We read A Midsummer Night's Dream because it is a really pliable play, and it gives the younger learners (my intro class is predominately freshmen) a good base for Shakespeare, as they read Romeo and Juliet in ELA the same trimester.

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Rebecca Black
Teacher/Director
Wayland Union High School
MI
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Love this question. I'm mainly teaching playwrights, so my examples may be a bit different. 

I've used both Joe Turner's Come and Gone and Proof together with great discussions about their polarity. 

I would love to use Amadeus both as film and play to see the differences--and there are many--between the two genres. This is particularly interesting because Shaffer wrote both and they are quite different. 

Two plays that deal with hidden societies would be fascinating to share with students. Both these plays deal with "hidden" communities in our society where a stranger intrudes and causes chaos. Humans Remain by Robin Rice is described on her website,  Angel Band by Robert P. Arthur takes place among the Blue People of Kentucky. And, yes, both these communities exist. I would love to use one of these with high school or college-age students who are often themselves feeling alienated.

And I have to mention Intimate Apparel by Lynn Nottage.

Thanks for the great question. I could keep listing for the rest of the morning!

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Jean Klein
Playwriting Teacher in MFA program, Wilkes University]
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This is such a great question. I am wondering how we can include stylistic diversity as well. For example, there are huge differences between August Wilson and Ntozake Shange.

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Eric Engdahl
California Educational Theatre Association
CA
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Original Message:
Sent: 02-02-2023 11:42
From: Rob Duval
Subject: What Plays Do You Read in Class?

A Raisin in the Sun. I love the play - there are so many universal issues we discuss and it always astounds students that it's based on actual events, which we study a bit (the court case Hansberry vs. Lee - 1940).

My Theatre 1 class reads one-act plays: Aesop's Oh So Slightly updated Fables (K. Esop Wylie), paired with Medieval Theatre , Check Please (J. Rand) for Character and duet scene work , and The Long View (A. Haehnel), final exam monologue and audition work .

My upper levels read, The Odd Couple (N. Simon), The Heidi Chronicles (W. Wasserstein), Intimate Apparel (L. Nottage), Brighton Beach Memoirs (N. Simon), The Laramie Project, and Women of Lockerbie paired with Medea .

Love this question - Keep responding - great ideas coming from this group!

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Marla Blasko
Director/Teacher Theatre Arts
Long Reach High School
Columbia, Maryland
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We've done Oedipus Rex and Midsummer, for the classic value and often paired with design and/or dramaturgy activities. When the Drama Club has a show going on, we often start with a reading of that play in class and do some scene work, design assignments, and/or character studies. It helps build interest in the show and sometimes gives me design ideas I would not have had on my own.

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Josh Kauffman
Teacher, Thespian Society/Drama Club sponsor
Winfield City Schools
Winfield, AL
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Hi everyone -

Just want to direct everyone to the Dramatists Guild Educator Resource Page - https://www.dramatistsguild.com/educators- especially to the Expanding the Canon (Plays and Musicals to Help Create a More Inclusive Canon) list.  We've been collecting curated lists for this exact reason of diversifying the texts taught and staged in schools. There are also some great articles about "What I'm Teaching Now" featuring educators sharing lessons and ideas for engaging students in different ways.  Bookmark this page as we continue to provide resources for educators (and please let us know if there's anything missing or anything else that would be helpful to add!).

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Stephen Kaplan
Lead Teacher - BCA; DG Council & Education Committee Co-Chair
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I'm a huge fan of Idris Goodwin; he offers excellent roles for Black actors, with parts for other races as well. Innua Ellams has beautiful work for for Black actors and also features experiences of immigrants. The Container by Clare Bayley-also focuses on the immigrants journey with roles black and Brown actors.

My school's population has mostly Black and White kids, so that is where I focus my plays. What is your population?

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Jennifer Trice
Theatre Director
Green Run High School
VA
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