The first semester of the 2018-2019 school year, I helped my friend Jeff with another opportunity in teaching kids about theatre through the medium of world theatre. Throughout the semester we used Indonesian Shadow puppets, dances from around the world, and a Latin American fairy tale to inspire new students in a beginning acting class.
This is the first time I tried teaching a Polynesian dance. First, I taught them all how to make poi balls. Then I taught them a poi ball dance. They did fairly well. They activity was fun. I think we will need to try it again.
At the end of the semester the performed their pieces for a small audience.
I really loved the shadow puppets this year. A couple of the groups really tried hard to make puppets that were a little more inspired by the puppets of Indonesian Shadow puppets. It was very impressive.
The Production Workshop class tried something new this year as well. I loved my experience in college with my Playwright, Director, Actor class. I saw several student written plays in the one-act festival at state that I had the privileged of judging the past spring. It got me thinking. I thought it would be perfect if I could get the kids to do a student written play. So, I approached the Creative Writing teacher at school and asked if he would be willing to add a play writing unit to his creative writing class. He was game. His classes produced 4 different plays. Our class read them and chose two of them to produce for our One-Act Festival. I loved the experience. I think the kids learned a ton about what makes a good play through the experience. The English teacher and I agreed that it would be great to try it again and we decided that we do this joint project every other year.
Resigning as the General Manager of the Universe 