Dinner Theatre Update…better late than never?

Well, I haven’t written about our Dinner Theatre project lately — and it’s not for lack of things to write. We have been rather rushed since coming back from the spring break. However, on Thursday night it will all come to an end. At 5:30, there will be appetizers for the 250 people who bought tickets; 6:30, the curtain parts and our collective hits the stage; 7:30, it’s suppertime and we’re almost done. By 9:30, no doubt the staff will all have collapsed in a heap on the floor somewhere, and the students will be out having a big party.

One thing this project has taught me: It doesn’t matter what you do in order to engage students with school – you still only have them for 5.5 hours a day, and for the other 18.5, they are back in their lives, dealing with the things they have to deal with. Until these students most basic needs are met, school will always come second. And it has to come second!

This is where I have some hope — we are looking at building a new school in our inner city, with the goal being that it meets the needs of the students. It won’t look like a traditional “cells and bells” factory-model antiquated building. This week an architectural and educational consulting company is coming up from Minneapolis to meet with community members, to try to figure out how to best meet the diverse needs of the students and the larger community. I feel very lucky to have started on at this school just as staff embark on this daunting but exciting mission. I’ll have the opportunity to see some of the other schools this company has worked on when I go with our admin to Minnesota in two weeks. Now, all we have to do is finish the Dinner Theatre, collect some data, and reflect on how project-based-learning will fit into our new learning model, and our new building. Not a small task, but an exciting one.

To start, I have received ethics approval from the University to collect data (quantitative and qualitative) on some students involved in the dinner theatre. The thought right now is that this will form the basis for my thesis, however, we’ll see what I get. At the very least, the data will help us as we move forward with improving learning for our students. Now, all I have to do is get through a day of rehearsals, and two days of shows…I’ll let you know how it goes.

Holidays/Back to Work

Well, here we are — just one more day of Christmas holidays left. I had a productive break, to say the least. In between a lot of visiting with friends and family, we painted the main floor of our house (including the lovely tall walls thanks to the vaulted ceiling) and managed to both get sick. I’m excited to get back to work, because there’s only three weeks left in this quarter, and come February 1st, we’re embarking on the integrated curriculum Grade 10 Dinner Theatre Project.

I’ve mentioned the project before, but here’s the summary again – all grade ten students will be enrolled, and will be with us all day as they earn credits in English, Information Processing, Entrepreneurship, and Foods or Drama by completing activities/tasks/assignments relating directly to the planning and performing of a dinner theatre. The hope is that the tangible nature of the learning will increase student attendance and, ultimately, retention in school. We’ve had great support from the school board thus far, providing us with time away from the classroom to prepare. That isn’t to say that we have everything figured out – but we are well on our way.

I’m teaching the Drama 10 component, where we will be doing some improv and contextual drama before creating a collective, the “theatre” part of the program. I’m excited to work with the students and draw on their experiences and backgrounds to build a piece of theatre that is poignant, thoughtful, and witty. Working with my improv team was like a mini-warm up for me — I can’t wait!

One great article I found (or was sent by a friend, I should say) was about interviewing community members, and turning their stories into monologues. Basically, students go out into their community, record interviews with people, transcribe them, edit where needed, and perform them. I think it’s a great way to provide dramatic distance for the actresses/actors as they portray some of the realities of life in their neighbourhood.

As we get closer, I’ll keep you posted on the progress. I’m so excited I’ve decided to change the focus of my thesis (not that I did anything more than write a proposal up to this point, mind you) to a qualitative study of project based instruction, examining the effect on both students and teachers. I’ll start doing background reading once I’m done the grad class I start on Tuesday (only 14 weeks left!) and hopefully be able to collect some data the next time we run the project. Or the time after. We’ll see how fast I read.

Improvisation

Improv theatre has been a big part of my life for the last 14 years. I competed in the Canadian Improv Games tournaments provincially and nationally while in high school. After that, I volunteered to referee and judge at the National Tournament, and was a founding member of a professional improv company that I worked with for eight years. When we moved away to Cambodia, I left all of this behind. Upon returning, I was very excited to be involved again, coaching a team at the high school where I work.

My team is made up of two students. The maximum allowed number on a team is eight, and generally teams have a full roster. One year a team I saw performing in Ottawa had only five members, but that was the smallest I’d ever seen. We ended up a team of two because we had trouble finding students who could commit — three strong students who had performed in the past now had jobs every day after school; another had to babysit his siblings. At first, the two were uneasy about their lack of teammates. The defining moment came when we had a scheduled workshop with an improv trainer three weeks before the games, and our third member canceled at the last minute. At the workshop, they were amazing, and it became apparent to the team that we could do it with two people. And use it to our advantage.

The two students work very well together — they listen wonderfully, and play off of each other’s strengths. We’ve had to play with the structures created for events — for example, the story event demands that a story be told through use of narration. With only two people, this is problematic – one narrates, the other acts? How will that work? However, while bemoaning my situation one night, my brilliant wife came up with the idea of using second person narration. With some tweaking, we now have a story where the audience is the main character – and it works wonderfully!

Last week was the preliminary round of the tournament. Eighteen teams from around the province competed for the right to represent the province in May in Ottawa.  We ended up in 5th place, good enough for a spot in the Wild-Card, where the winning team moves onto the finals. Last night was Wild-Card, and they rose to the challenge, coming out on top. The look of shock on their faces when announced winners really typified the humble, calm nature of the team. I was overjoyed.

Tonight we play in the finals. No matter how we end up finishing, I will be so proud of my team: So proud of what they’ve done for improvisation — how they’ve changed expectations, turned a perceived weakness into a strength, and shown what is really possible when you throw out everything you think you know. What great people. I couldn’t be prouder.