A pilot drama program launched this year at Peeples Elementary is helping students connect the theatre and theatrical concepts to subjects they are learning in class and to real life experiences. It also develops critical thinking, creativity, and collaboration skills by encouraging students to create engaging research material to prepare other students to experience a performance.
The Woodruff Arts Center brought the Alliance Theatre’s “Dramaturgy by Students” program to the school, which involved both kindergarten and third grade students. The program empowers students to fully explore the world of an Alliance Theatre production, providing research and context to both professional performers and student audiences. An Alliance Theatre teaching artist collaborates with a classroom teacher and students, who serve as junior dramaturgs for a production. Dramaturgs are responsible for researching all elements of a story to get it stage-ready.
The research, led by the teaching artist, includes reading the play, as well as investigating the characters, settings, and source materials of the play.
For the program’s culminating event, resident teaching artist Kim Baran arranged for The Alliance’s Theatre of the Very Young to bring the performance of “Roob and Noob” to the students at Peeples.
To prepare for it, the third-grade students took on the job of dramaturg to research and define the elements of the show, and to educate the kindergartners, the main audience, about the show’s content. “Roob and Noob” is about two overly curious scientists who love discovering something new. It combines science and the arts to create an interactive adventure where the scientists build simple machines that help them explore each of the four seasons.
The third graders created a dramaturgy board, exploring the main parts of the show. They also developed questions focused on key concepts of the performance such as gravity, motion, and differences among the four seasons.
“This has been a great experience for our students. The combination of drama with subjects we are studying makes learning more fun and relevant. The students have really enjoyed this unique and wonderful experience,” said third-grade teacher Monica Thomas, whose students served as the dramaturgs for the “Roob and Noob” performance.
The other teachers at Peeples involved in the pilot were Carrie Collins (kindergarten), Mili Dee (kindergarten), and Michele Fulmer (third grade).
Due to the success of The Alliance Theatre’s “Dramaturgy by Students” program at Peeples Elementary, the goal is to place it at more of the county’s elementary schools next year.
