The Major Benefits For Students Attending Live Theatre

The Major Benefits for Students Attending Live Theatre

Recently on CBS Sunday Morning, (one of my all time favorite television shows) they aired a piece about To Kill a Mockingbird now running on Broadway.

Although I don’t agree with having adults portraying the children’s roles (metaphoric?), I’m thrilled about one particular thing:  school kids are being bussed in to see the show for $10.00.

Check it out television story here:

To Kill a Mockingbird CBS Sunday Morning

Several years ago, I co-administrated a youth theatre company in Coumbia, Missouri.  P.A.C.E. wanted to do more than little kids shows.  While I was involved with it, we produced The Diary of Anne Frank and The Miracle Worker, for example.

We wanted to do meat and boy, did we!

One of the productions was To Kill a Mockingbird. Although we weren’t Broadway, the students did a tremendous job.  These kids were as young as sixth grade through twelfth.  That’s what made it so special.

What I really want to talk about is the students who had the opportunity to see LIVE THEATRE!  That’s what matters to me.

Think of it: what if every student had an opportunity to see a professional theatrical production?

The Major Benefits For Students Attending Live Theatre

New York Times.com photo

Upon researching for this post, I ran on this post from http://www.sciencedaily.com.

The research published in Education Next examined the impact on students of attending high-quality theater productions of either Hamlet or A Christmas Carol.

The researchers found that viewing the productions leads to enhanced knowledge of the plot, increased vocabulary, greater tolerance and improved ability to read the emotions of others.

“What we determined from this research is that seeing live theater produced positive effects that reading a play or watching a movie of the play does not produce,” said Jay Greene, professor of education reform. “Plays are meant to be seen performed live. You can’t always take your kids to a play but if you can, you should. The story can be conveyed in a movie, but it doesn’t engage the viewer in the same way.”

For the live theater study, Greene led a team that constructed a randomized field trial, the gold standard of research, by offering school groups in grades 7 through 12 free theater tickets to one of the performances. A total of 49 school groups with 670 students completed the application process. Applicant groups were organized into 24 matched groups based on similarity in terms of grade level, demographics and whether they comprised a drama, English or other type of class. Lotteries were held to determine which groups would receive the free tickets and which would serve as the control group. Some members of both the control group and the treatment group also read the play or watched movie versions of these works.

The Major Benefits For Students Attending Live Theatre

Researchers then administered surveys to all students, on average about six weeks after the performances. For each play, researchers asked students six questions about the plot and five questions about the vocabulary used, combining them into a single scale of content knowledge. As compared to the control group, students who saw the live productions improved their knowledge of the plays by a very large margin. For example, 83 percent of the students who attended the play could identify Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as Hamlet’s friends, while only 45 percent of the control group correctly identified the two characters. More than 94 percent of the treatment group knew that Ophelia drowns in Hamlet, compared to 62 percent of the control group.

The research team found that reading and watching movies of Hamlet and A Christmas Carol could not account for the increase in knowledge experienced by students who attended live performances of the plays.

Students who attended live performances of the play also scored higher on the study’s tolerance measure than the control group by a moderately large margin and were better able to recognize and appreciate what other people think and feel. To determine whether live theater increases students’ ability to recognize the emotions of others, researchers administered the youth version of the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test, which was initially developed for research on autism. Students took a quiz that asked them to identify the characters’ emotions.

Isn’t this wonderful?  I say get those kids to a show!

What live theatre performances did you attend when you were a child?  I lived in a small town in Kansas and there were very few opportunities to attending a production.  We did see, a children’s theatre play Little Brown Jug (I think it was called that.)  is still vivid in my memory.  I’m sixty-two years old.  See?

I’d love to here from you.  Contact me at dhcbaldwin@gmail.com or DeborahBaldwin.net

If you’d like more information about me and my directing and teaching career, check out these posts:

Why You Should Use These Effective Teaching Methods, Part One

Why You Should Use These Effective Teaching Methods, Part Two

Eighteen Ways To Make Your Directing Experience Less Stressful, Part One

Or may you’d like to check out my lessons and units.  Dramamommaspeaks Store

Here’s one you might really want to own:

Bundle  15 Minute Plays and Units