Highlights the power of theatre to engage students in learning and shares the author's discoveries with heartfelt humility and self-awareness. Illustrates how a shift in her thinking led to a shift toward learner-centered instruction which led her to engaged student participation. (SG)

Explains the creation of the New Visions/New Voices festival which focuses attention on developing new scripts for young audiences. Notes that unlike other playwriting programs, New Visions does not require a complete script for application. Outlines the selection, casting, rehearsal process, dramaturg involvement, and post-reading discussions of…

Describes the recent trend of establishing theater companies in science museums and zoos. Provides a brief history of science museums. Emphasizes that modern science museums and zoos are interactive. Examines the American Zoo as a model. Presents an overview of two museum theater groups and describes some of the current popular shows at other…

Describes the ongoing work of a teacher whose Summer Institute for Drama/Teacher Education at the University of Tennessee provides training for both theater and classroom teachers. Focuses on her teaching method--improvisational drama--which simultaneously addresses elements common to fiction and script writing, and now contained in the language…

Describes how two high school theatre students and the author negotiated preparation, rehearsal, performance, and reflection as they developed and performed Invisible Theatre scripts addressing their school's lunchroom (mis)behavior of excessive litter. Notes that Invisible Theatre is a public theatre which involves the public as participants in…

Describes the involvement of two Grade 11 drama classes with the PAL (Peer-Assisted Learning) program, a coaching model in which senior students in Ontario secondary schools function as instructional aides for younger peers. Suggests that both coaches and students benefit when seniors act as learning partners for their younger peers. Includes…

Relates how a professor, for a Theater in Education project in British Columbia, produced and directed "No More Secrets," focusing on preventing child sexual abuse. States that grades five through eight were targeted to transfer learning about sexual abuse, and to tap the emotional experiences of the child to encourage disclosure. (PA)

Presents multiple perspectives on an innovative teacher education partnership. Considers meaningful roles professional theatres can play in theatre teacher education programs. Discerns that teachers in the formative stages of their careers are in an ideal position to accept and practice the innovative approach to teaching and learning presented.…

Describes the creation of a theater-based program for eighth-grade students in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg (Georgia) Schools. Chronicles the efforts of playwright Ed Shockley to write a play focusing on teen violence and aimed at eighth-grade students. Concludes that the program and the play succeeded in accomplishing their goals. Relates three…

Discusses the 1996 edition of Montreal's Coups de Theatre. Questions whether festival productions should be juried, what criteria should be used, and how to compare new creations against established productions. Describes various festival productions, a total of 19 productions from 6 countries. Discusses what these plays say to young people. (CR)

Describes the author's development of a theatre curriculum intended to reach thousands of children in the United States and around the world. Discusses how this curriculum development opportunity required that she break some of her own rules. Describes the long list of criteria the grantor required for what they fund and how she worked to fulfill…

Notes that assessment and evaluation models, even portfolios, measure impact over fairly short periods of time. Discusses how transformative moments happen out of educators' line of vision and sometimes long after these students have left the classrooms and rehearsal halls. Discusses instances when teens isolated the content of the play they were…

Discusses, in poetic form, the writing of the play "Salvador" from the perspective of the author. Explains her thoughts about writing for children, including didactic relationships with children, didactic functions of art, and how adults teachers try to create a sterilized, lifeless, good-thinking, and artificial world for children when they are…

Describes the childhood experience of seeing the play "The Rainmaker," and its lifelong effect on the author, and other personal experience stories. Suggests that theater teachers should share stories of their positive teaching experiences with their fellow teachers. Promotes personal storytelling as a part of drama-teacher preparation. (CR)

Examines "Theater-in-Education," (TIE) a unique British-inspired teaching-and-learning methodology which combines young people's theater with creative drama, currently taught at a handful of universities in the United States. Finds that, as a result of the program's tour to 10 fifth-grade classrooms in five schools, area teachers were unanimous in…