Reflection No. 1

Developing the Scope &  Sequence

One thing I tried to keep in mind through designing my curriculum is that, as we have been told several times throughout our summer M.A. program, it is important to focus on the process, and not necessarily the product. Designing a curriculum for students you have never met is a daunting task. I am under the assumption this scope and sequence will remain a living document and will never truly be “finished”. From my understanding of the program I am joining, I will be responsible for the technical side of our program, and thus will have limited instructional time for the acting portion for our theatre 1 students. This means that the theatre 1 curriculum for my scope and sequence will be truly my ideal scenario, not necessarily what I will be teaching. I will be co-teaching the upper-level acting courses alongside my head director, so with that in mind, I am able to work from the top down into what I expect my fourth-year students to know, regardless of whether I am teaching the introductory theatre class or not. Our program is also special because the students in our theatre 1 classes receive one semester of acting and then one semester of technical theatre, where my partner and I switch students at the end of the fall semester.  My scope and sequence will be an expanded version of what my students would experience at my current school but will include some technical aspects. The biggest challenge will be integrating my ideas into a well-established theatre program without sacrificing my vision of a solid curriculum.

To begin creating my scope and sequence, I needed “big picture” questions to help me solidify the direction I wanted my curriculum to follow. I ended up choosing two main questions that really struck me as overarching questions that apply to the student and their art. Those questions are: “Who am I?” and “What do I want?”. These can be broken down even further. “Who am I, the artist?” encompasses skills in acting and technical theatre such as warm-up skills, knowledge of voice and body, understanding of their own technical skillset, and understanding of theatre etiquette. “Who am I, the character?” includes an understanding of script analysis, given circumstances, and periods and theatre history. “What do I want, the character?” is an understanding of tactics and objectives. Lastly, “What do I want, the artist?” is an understanding of theatre as an institution, ranging from theatre hierarchy and careers to creating portfolios and preparing for a future in the industry. Though there are four questions, and my school runs for four quarters, these segments are not necessarily equal in length. In upper-level theater classes here students understand the basics of warm-ups and voice, the sections on preparation will be shorter and more streamlined with more emphasis on specific study and application of acting styles. Similarly, in years 1 and 4, there will be a larger emphasis on preparing for auditions and information on theatrical disciplines. Theatre 1 students are given this information to spark interest in the various areas of theatre and Theatre 4 students are given more in-depth information to prepare them for collegiate programs and careers in the industry. Theatre 2 and 3 will focus mainly on the “Who am I” and “What do I Want” questions from the character’s perspective. My expectation of the levels is that they build on each other. 

As an overview, Theatre 1 will be a general overview course with basic introductions and fast-paced lessons to keep the interest of the varied individuals that get placed in that class. The course will focus on the foundations of theatre, audience etiquette, basic acting skills, improvisational theatre, and theatre vocabulary to prepare students to move into an upper-level theatre class. Students will learn to identify basic plot structures and the given circumstances within a play. It will also consist of an overview of each technical theatre discipline with project-based lessons. Theatre 2 will start as a brief refresher course, an introduction and application of rehearsal procedures, an in-depth study of character development, as well as some in-depth monologue and scene work. Theatre 2 will be used as a sandbox for the students to develop their own characters from scripts and be able to make complex character choices without much assistance. This will be achieved by working through different acting methods including Shurtleff, Hagen, Stanislavsky, and other methods researched and applied by the students. Theatre 3 will also begin as a refresher course but will be used as a chance for independent actor growth with less guidance and more emphasis on movement, focusing on techniques like viewpoints and Laban exercises. These techniques will be used to produce long-form duets and group scenes with an emphasis on clear objectives and tactics.  In addition to this, theatre 3 students will also explore playwriting. Theatre 4 will function as a culmination of all three years of theatre with an emphasis on directing and creating a fully realized product. The goal of theatre 4 is to present a well-rounded performer that can answer each of my four over-arching questions with much specificity. On the character side, a theatre 4 student should be able to quickly break down a script into its given circumstances, identify their objective, and choose character-specific tactics to play when acting out their scripts. On the actor side, a theatre four student should be able to identify what area of theatre they would be successful in (regardless of if they will pursue theatre as a career), what further education they will need (if any) to pursue that career, and the next steps they should take upon graduating high school. The duty of any educator is to prepare students for the future. While not every student will end up pursuing theatre in the future, through my curriculum, students should be able to apply the skills they learn in my course to break down and problem-solve with the critical thinking skills they have learned from theatre.