In 2007 I became the Theatre Director at West Anchorage High School. While I had been Directing at the school for several years, I was now in charge of all the procurement of texts as well as all other aspects of the program. It became clear to me that the coursework at this level was neither rigorous nor met the needs of typical high school students. In my opinion, available texts were merely collections of theatre games and dumbed down techniques, with little or no regard to theatrical history or literature.
Over the last eight years, I have been using my classroom as a laboratory for developing a text for high school performers. The text uses history as a spine, moving through the ages, so that a teacher could cover the gamut of theatre, from Ancient Greece to the present day in one school year.
Each chapter contains a discussion of the period, a play representative of the era, performance techniques which relate to the style of play, and several theatre games which develop the technique. This holistic approach better prepares students for the next level of performance as well as grounding them in historical and literary fundamentals they should know before they ever set foot in a conservatory or university.
Completion of this text is expected in 2018.
