This guide, “How to Teach Drama to Kids” will take someone unsure of the main principles of teaching theatre arts to various ages, through the basic categories and components principally considered to be the heart of the study of Drama. Whether you are a music or English teacher hired to teach a semester of Drama, or an actor commissioned to do a series of children’s workshops, this guide will take you through a stage-by-stage process including exercises for the under 10 age group, the pre-teens, and the high-school ages. The author adds her own tips for making particularly challenging games or exercises “work,” and presents her own hints for keeping your resources and equipment to an inexpensive and manageable budget.
With chapters from the basics of “Movement,” “Voice,” “Improvisation,” “Role-Playing” and “Scene Work” to the more intricate additions of “Story-Telling,” “Puppetry” “Stage-Fighting” and “Chorus-Line Dancing Steps,” this guide is broken down so that you may choose to eliminate certain chapters from your planning or to add the author’s hints for extending an exercise to make it last longer and to be more enriching to the students.
About the Expert
With her first on-stage appearance at age 4, her first leading role at age 11 and her professional stage roles culminating primarily in character parts in comedies, and for troupes catering to parties and murder mystery dinner theatres, Julie Johnson decided in 1997 that she would be well-suited to TEACH Drama to others. After graduating with a four-year specialist degree in teaching the Performing Arts, she moved to England to further work in both schools and theater. While mostly teaching high school Theater Arts since then (in three different countries) she has also been a leader of workshops for pre-teens and adults, a guest-speaker at college level, an adjudicator for theatre festivals and a coach and judge for speech and debate competitions. Here, in this guide, she offers many of her tips, games and exercises for teaching three different age groups under 18 years.
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