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Improvisation In The Classroom

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I took a risk and asked my students “What are some issues you may have with or have witnessed in education?” Of course I received answers that were somewhat ridiculous and facetious, but there were some serious, thought-provoking answers. My favorite answer that I received came from a highly intellectual junior. She said “originality is dead!” I couldn’t help but agree with her, but I teach theatre arts. I strive for my students to be original and create original work. I even have a poster in my room that simply says “Be Original.” Now I could go on and on about how society and the government are to blame because they are not allowing our students to be original. They are force feeding them information and before that information can be truly …show more content…

Open scenes are short scenes that have dialogue, but no direction or interpretation. It is up to the students to interpret the text and then perform for the rest of the class. I normally do this lesson and assignment before my scene acting unit, which is the final unit before the end of the first semester of my introductory level theatre arts classes and can and should be revisited in the upper level theatre classes. However, the open scene lesson is not the first step in the unit. The students already having acting experience from the previous units of course and I purposefully wait to introduce this lesson until after the improvisation unit. Improvisation can get quite ridiculous because the students are all trying to be funny and the audience’s laughter fuels the fire and sometimes the flames can get out of …show more content…

I get to direct sophomores, juniors and seniors in high school in a school environment and I love what I do. I am passionate about the art of acting theatre. My passion started in high school. I chose to continue in higher education and I strive to share that passion with my students and get them excited about the arts. My theatre experience in college was very much a constructivist environment, especially when it came to acting. Different instructional models and theories also came into play in throughout my time there, but it all lead to what theatre truly is and that is collaboration. Us students worked together with our professors/directors as facilitators to build our knowledge of theatre. Directors have a vision and they look for their actors and designers to make a decisions for themselves to help achieve that vision and make it come to life on stage. As Piaget said “Learners don’t have knowledge forced on them - they create it for

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