Drama
Drama by Division
Lower School
Drama in the Lower School provides students the opportunity to cultivate creativity, express their learning through performance, and develop skills such as empathy and confidence while deepening their connection to each other and the world around them. Students get experience with various art forms including puppetry, stop-motion animation and playmaking.
In Kindergarten and Class 1, students build their social emotional and expressive skills through puppetry and role-play. Students use stories as a jumping off point for their exploration, which allows each student to consider, examine and embrace attitudes that differ from their own. Within the safety of a story, students build fluency, empathy, and their sense of narrative structure.
In Classes 2 and 3, students learn the fundamentals of theater making and develop the tools to facilitate their creative endeavors. We begin by focusing on the core elements of story building: Character, Action and Setting. Students use their own lives and experiences as inspiration for their storytelling but also pull from what they are learning in the homeroom to inform their artistic demonstrations of learning. Students are given the opportunity to write and perform original plays as well as exhibit their learning in non-traditional formats.
Middle School
In Middle School Drama, students continue to develop the actor's instrument - body, voice and mind - through ongoing exploration of the physical, vocal, characterization and staging elements of drama. In all classes, MS Drama students participate in a variety of group and individual activities in process and performance. Integrated projects with other subjects create multiple opportunities for deep and experiential learning, as well as the chance for teachers to link learning objectives within the arts and core content subjects.
Class 4 Drama explores how inspiration affects what we create. Using different prompts including words, pictures and objects, students learn specific skills, such as still image and concrete mime. Improvisational skills are utilized in a study of Forum Theatre where students use themes of family, school, and friendship to examine injustice and to explore how they can use their individual power to solve personal problems that they encounter in their lives.
In Class 5, text becomes a major focus in the Drama classroom. Students gain skills as emergent playwrights by identifying and utilizing elements of dramatic text in writing and theater activities. Class 5 students also engage in a unit on collaborative playwriting and performance to further strengthen their skills.
Class 6 places a focus on creating characters using various forms of inspiration, including contemporary texts. Students apply imagination and analysis to the creation of original characters and a backstory, therefore, deepening the actor’s individual process of becoming a character.
Class 7 students engage in a scene study unit, using all of their MS drama skills to create, stage, perform and refine fully realized scenes from contemporary plays. Heightened text is also introduced in Class 7 through Shakespeare and his plays.
Upper School
The Upper School Drama curriculum provides opportunities for students to explore all aspects of theatrical production, including performance, technical theater, directing and playwriting. Since theater is inherently collaborative and interdisciplinary, the program aims to foster a sense of artistic community, create opportunities for students to take creative risks and develop projects that integrate subjects such as history, science, music, dance and activism.
In Classes 8 and 9, drama is a part of the InterArts sequence. InterArts Drama classes focus on ensemble-building, improvisation, and the elements of scenic and costume design. Higher-level elective curses are available to students in Classes 10-12 as a part of the FOCUS electives program.
Classes and productions give students the opportunity to work intensively with text and expose actors to a wide range of directing styles and techniques. The faculty have experience and expertise in a broad range of theatrical styles and disciplines, including classical theater, musicals, devised and applied theatre and design and technical theatre. Students also have the opportunity to work with outside professionals in acting, directing and design and to attend workshops from Shakespeare to stage combat.
FOCUS Courses
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Acting Fundamentals
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All the World's A Stage: Bringing Shakespeare to Life
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Performance Studio
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Technical Theater & Design
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Verbatim Performance
