Immersive Theater in the Classroom: 5 Creative Activities

Students dressed in theatrical costumes illustrate immersive theater in the classroom, featuring 5 creative drama activities that bring stories to life.

5 Creative Immersive Theater Activities for Students Immersive theater in the classroom brings an exciting new dimension to traditional drama activities. In traditional theater, actors generally perform on a stage while the audience watches from their seats. Immersive theater changes that experience! Instead of simply watching a performance, audience members enter the environment where the […]

Teaching Día de los Muertos Through Drama Integration

Teaching Día de los Muertos Through Drama Integration

We teachers are always on the hunt for new materials to teach lesson about different cultures.  Honestly, it isn’t always easy to do so.  I can help with one important day in the Hispanic culture. Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, offers teachers a wonderful opportunity to bring culture, history, literature, art, […]

30 Ways to Use Radio Theater in Any Subject

30 Ways to Use Radio Theater in Any Subject When people hear the term radio theater, they often assume it belongs exclusively in a drama classroom. After all, theater and acting seem like natural partners. This post expands on ideas I recently shared in my Edutopia article about radio theater and student engagement. While that […]

Engaging Reluctant Students in Drama Class

Engaging Reluctant Students in Drama Class This blog post, Engaging Reluctant Students in Drama Class, began with considering  every drama teacher eventually faces: students sitting in class who never intended to be there in the first place. When I taught a large middle school drama class which was a pre-elective, more than 500 sixth graders […]

Directing Youth Theater: 10 Dos and Don’ts

Vertical blog cover reading “Directing Youth Theater: 10 Dos and Don’ts” above a photo of smiling young actors in costume seated in a theater auditorium.

Directing Youth Theater: 10 Dos and Don’ts Directing youth theater is one of the most rewarding experiences you can have as an educator or theater arts person. It is also one of the most challenging. Over the years, I directed hundreds of productions and worked with students of all ages, personalities, and ability levels.  Along […]

Teach Playwriting with Norman Rockwell Paintings

Blog cover for teaching playwriting with Norman Rockwell paintings, showing artwork examples and a creative drama and ELA lesson idea

Teach Playwriting with Norman Rockwell Paintings When I taught playwriting, one of the biggest challenges was helping students move past the blank page. That’s why I began to teach playwriting with Norman Rockwell paintings, using images filled with character, emotion, and story to spark student ideas. Instead of asking students to invent everything from scratch, […]