Theatre for a New Audience

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Theatre for a New Audience: Winter/Spring 2001 Season Productions:
New Voices combines the experience of classical theatre of extraordinary quality with an in-depth classroom residency by professional artists. The goal of the program is the exploration of deep and imaginative writing, culminating in the completion of a one-act play.
A playwright, a poet, and a team of actors work with the classroom teacher to build literacy skills, promote active and responsible communication, and develop new collaborative approaches to teaching writing.

"My students responded beautifully to the challenge of the language of Shakespeare. In post-production comments, many confessed that they were very skeptical at first -- but they found things in themselves, their fellow students, even in their teacher, that they didn't know were there."

 -- Teacher, District 11, 1997

PROGRAM COMPONENTS:

1) Staff Development: A planning workshop is held in each participating school before the inception of the residency with all classroom teachers, teaching artists, and staff. The purpose of this meeting is to review program objectives and identify strategies for implementation.

"If everyone acted out Shakespeare's plays like we did, the world would be a better place."

-- Student, District 30, 1997

Planning time is also incorporated daily into the residency for teacher and playwright to reflect upon the progress of the students and to structure the curriculum for future sessions.
2) Playwright in Residence: Professional playwrights work in partnership with classroom teachers to help students write their own plays. The residency includes up to 14 visits, leading students through a curriculum that prepares them for the professional production, and then use this production as a touchstone for the development of characters, themes, and dialogue that communicates students' own point of view.
Each visit, consisting of three classes and one planning session with the participating teachers, builds upon the last to develop student scripts.

"The manner of the teaching artist, and his ability to keep the students' attention was superb. He was able to encourage even the poorest writers to produce quality work."

-- Teacher, Benjamin Cardoza High School, 1997

3) Poet Visits: A professional poet will visit each classroom 2-3 times to collaborate with the playwright on the use of heightened language, to develop in the students a unique and powerful voice as a writer.
4) Theatre Tickets: Students attend a matinee performance of an Off-Broadway classical play produced by Theatre for a New Audience, the same critically acclaimed productions by artists of stature that our general audiences see in the evening.

"This program and this play will stay with me for a very long time, because it was educational and also so much fun. Thank you so much."

--   Shanna, 4th grade, PS 276, Brooklyn, 1998

Attending the production grounds students in a dramatic context, and broadens their understanding of the greater theatrical tradition to which their playwriting belongs. In the 1998-99 school year, the play was The Iphigenia Cycle by Euripedes.
5) Actor Workshop and Professional Reading: A team of professional actors hired and trained by Theatre for a New Audience visits each school twice. Halfway through the residency the actors conduct a developmental workshop to facilitate the students' writing process, an event often praised by teachers as "inspiring."
Later, as a culmination to the residency, these actors return to perform a full-scale reading of completed student scripts in a school assembly that includes an audience of peers, parents, and administrators, giving professional validity to the classroom work.

Back to Education 

"Before Rosalie [the playwright-in-residence] showed up at Transit Tech, I didn't like to write about anything. Now I think about many different subjects in different ways....I think I would like to write scripts for the movies. I hope Rosalie comes back again."

-- Buddrud-din Zaid, East New York High School student, 1995

 

 

send questions or comments to:  info@tfana.org

The Theatre's season is made possible, in part, with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts--a state agency,
the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

NYSCA N.E.A.

 

 For more information, or to send
questions or comments, write:  info@tfana.org

TFANA: 154 Christopher Street #3D, New York, NY  10014