Can critical questions and complicated conversations addressing issues of representation, difference, and witnessing be positioned at the centre of a TYA curriculum? This article examines contemporary, issue-based and culturally specific TYA scripts. In addition, a collection of aesthetic representations are offered as dynamic prompts to help…

This article explores how the Disney Company scripts what it is to be a tween through the "High School Musical" trilogy. While children's perspective is of pivotal concern within childhood studies, it has traditionally left out the material aspects and rather focused too narrowly on the subject and the social. I found that the trilogy…

Shakespeare didn't write scripts so much as he wrote plays--live productions to be acted out in front of audiences through multimodal forms of expression. Yet some teachers' script-only approach to the Bard inadvertently isolates students from the many visual, auditory, and performative elements that make his plays so enduring. This article…

When the lights come up on College of Menominee Nation's theater productions they illuminate the stories that students want to tell. These stories have traveled from the campfires, to classrooms, and then to the stage. They are original in execution but build on a long tradition of Indigenous storytelling. The stories are specific to the students,…

Advocacy begins with an assumption that if a number of community members are suffering, then there must be something wrong, not with the individual members, but with the community as a whole; therefore, the community must be changed to help alleviate that suffering. Advocacy creates a platform for change by allowing individuals to begin the…

What do actors have in common with bigots, bullies and their victims? They play the same script over and over. This article discusses how social justice theater can teach students to take the story into their own hands. It describes Forum Theater, a dramatic method that sets up tightly scripted dramas of power and difference, then encourages the…

Describes a structured set of procedures for critical script appraisal of nontheatrical scripts by carefully selected evaluators. An overview of the procedure, script reviewer qualities, the questionnaire's structure and objectives, and discussion of a sequence-by-sequence evaluation, script annotations, reviewer comments, and report preparation…

The last of four related manuals describing the goals and methods of an established developmental theatre project at the University of Colorado, this manual discusses the processes involved in selecting and adapting scripts for specific audiences. The manual suggests ways to cut longer plays for school audiences, methods for organizing parts of…

Explores the concept of "theater of the mind" and discusses design factors in creating audio works that effectively stimulate mental pictures, including: narrative format in audio scripting; qualities of voice; use of concrete language; music; noise versus silence; and the creation of the illusion of space using monaural, stereophonic,…

Creative drama, as a language art, has been a part of the elementary school curriculum for a number of years. Community organizations also have long been concerned with offering children rewarding experiences in creative dramatics, and many have pioneered in the establishment of children's theaters. Because of the relatively small percentage of…