I stepped in as a guest instructor at Theatre Direct’s Drama School this afternoon. We did an intro-to-improv session (making and accepting offers, who/what/where) during the Ensemble class. This is a group of experience students, aged 7 to 11 who have done some drama before.

While I love the challenge of working within a classroom situation, where there is  a variety of comfort levles and dramatic experience, I have to admit that it’s so lovely to work with a group whose members have all chosen Drama! This group (all girls) reminded me of a group I worked with recently at Classic Music Conservatory on Roncesvalles with Kyra Millan.

I’m excited to be working with this Theatre Direct group again next week – improvised storytelling, can’t wait!!

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Busy, busy, busy and travel, travel, travel.

Recent weeks have seen me working for the Elementary Teachers Federation of Waterloo Region, Laurentian University School of Education, Drama class in Sudbury Secondary School, and in the Canadian Opera Company’s Four Seasons Centre Opera House. Whew!

Teachers can be either the best or the worst workshop participants, and the ones I met at the ETFO workshop were fantastic! Primary teachers who were bravely trying new drama techniques and laughing with each other all the way. The second full day of ETFO workshops was with junior-intermediate teachers and I was so impressed with their passion for getting drama learning into their classrooms.

They asked about how to turn ‘fun drama games’ into tangible, markable  parts of their curriculum. They asked about how to have meaningful drama time without wasting the whole session doing desk-moving and room set-up. They asked about how to include social justice discussions, literacy connections, and even math reinforcements into drama lessons.

We discussed these issues and so much more! And shared resources, showing that all of us teachers have loads of great ideas stored which can be so useful to our colleagues. Even sharing our tried (tired?) ideas with others gives new life to our programming. What an inspirational session!

Thanks to all participants at Forest Glen in the Waterloo Region.

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Tomorrow I start working at King Edward Jr. and Sr. PS in the Toronto District School Board. Hooray!!

We’ve planned an exciting 4-week residency during which I’ll be working with every single class in the school. That’s right, the primary grades, juniors, and all the seniors including those in the French Immersion, Extended French, and Gifted programs.

I stopped in at the school on Friday to touch base with the teachers I’ll be working with and am buzzing with ideas. So many of the teachers have prepped for my visit by incorporating my drama work deeply into their curriculum learning.

Here are some examples of class-specific goals:

One group of students will be working to create historically accurate characters from the time of Canada’s Confederation, of  immigrants settling Upper and Lower Canada and the native populations they encountered.

One class will be putting on a play of their own later in the year so we’ll focus on storytelling skills and how to keep the plot-line clear while having fun with sharing the story on stage.

The youngest grades will be working with fairy tales to practice staying in role, telling a story from different points of view, and experimenting with flexible gender roles in casting.

Those in French Language curriculum classes will be able to take the fun improv games learned with me and use them as an outlet for practicing conversational and spur-of-the-moment French in a lighthearted, student-driven way.

All grades will be focusing on encouraging each other, building a culture of “yes energy”, accepting a variety of ideas, taking risks as a group, and cooperating with all members of the class.

I’m so pleased with the strong initiative that the administrative staff at King Edward has taken, valuing the arts as an important part of their classroom learning, providing in-class opportunities for teacher Professional Development, and having the foresight and planning to ask: “How can this program create a maximum impact on our school?”

The King Edward residency runs 4 days/week from April 12 through May 7, 2010 and will culminate in a small performance which will open for the school’s larger drama production, May 5, and 6th, 2010.

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I’m so excited to announce that I’ll be judging the upcoming finals of the Canadian Improv Games in Kingston this year. I’ve held the tournament near and dear to my heart and am so thrilled to be able to finally bring my judging skills back to my favourite tourny!

The latest judging sheet I’ve got on my computer is from 2002-03 season. I think that there may have been some minor tweaks since then, but here is the breakdown:

Between 1 and 4 points for skills:
Making Offers; Accepting Offers; Advancing the Scene; Listening (I include ‘full body listening’ to this, meaning that you’re ‘listening’ to physical and verbal offers); Commitment (staying in role with energy); Endowing and Feeding; Stakes; Staging.

Between 1 and 7 points for specifics:
Skill of the event (were you achieving all that the event guidelines expect); Use of suggestion (was suggestion(s) infused in a variety of ways in the scene; was the scene dependent on the unique suggestion given and not a ‘plug and play’ scene); Risk/difficulty; Interest (general enjoyment and watchability).

Scores are out of 50 per scene (there’s a bonus point system in place, so don’t worry about adding up the totals of the categories above).

Are you an improv coach? I’m working on a ‘cheat sheet’ that I use for coaching sessions…let me know if you’re interested in a free copy!

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