Describes the drama program at Many Farms High School, Arizona, taught by Jim Hamilton. Points out that many minority students in the area are faced with high school dropout rates of 50%. Explains innovations developed by residents of "the Rez," home to the Navajo Nation, including presentation of plays directed, acted, and written in…

Shows that, because the school administration did not recognize the need for team building, a group of four magnet theater teachers did not form an effective group. Discusses how unresolved task, procedural, and interpersonal conflicts, and a lack of confidence in themselves as theater professionals also prevented the formation of an effective…

Describes the efforts of a teacher to create an after-school drama program where none existed before in a blue-collar area of Pennsylvania. Explains how an original production, "Voices from Middle School," was developed and performed through combining her after-school volunteer drama classes with an in-school poetry class. (PA)

Liberal arts faculty at the professionally oriented performing arts schools, whose subject matter is often viewed as peripheral to the institution's central mission, are working to end their relative isolation both within their institutions and from other liberal arts faculty. A recent first conference of such faculty addressed their concerns.…

The Young Scholars Program, a four-week intensive summer program of theater and dance that integrates deaf, hard of hearing, and hearing high school students, is described. The program emphasizes cultural diversity and experiential learning through field trips and student performances. (DB)

Presents a hands-on lesson that can integrate the use of makeup with studies of the history of Halloween; the history and practices of the theater; Native American or African tribes and their use of paint, makeup, and masks; and the history, skills, and makeup of clowns. (MDH)

Explains how to perform a booktalk as a readers' theater script and offers guidelines for staging. Two examples are given, one for a picture book and one for a novel; and nine booktalks are provided for historical books that are suitable for adaptation as readers' theater scripts. (LRW)

Discusses what drama teachers, directors, and administrators should know about the legal limits of their freedom of expression. Discusses the limitations imposed by the courts on administrative officials regarding their ability to control or regulate what theater students and teachers do. (RS)

Describes how the 1998 Multiculturalism and Diversity in Drama/Theatre Education: A Preconference came about, and briefly describes its activities and success. Offers ideas for future activities, and reminds readers of the critical necessity for action around issues of multiculturalism and diversity that transforms dreams into reality. (SR)

Describes a three-week summer theater program for middle and high school students. Discusses the reconstructing of Shakespeare's play "Hamlet" by students in the class from prior viewings of movie versions of the play and from students' past experiences with the play. Includes the play script as rewritten by the students. (CR)

Describes one English-as-a-foreign-language teacher's experiences using English language theater festivals in Romania as an instructional strategy. The festival format, goals and objectives, technical and dress rehearsals, and the actual performances are discussed. (Author/VWL)

Describes how use of panorama theater to teach middle school social studies can aid in teaching the academic skills of defining a problem, locating and collecting data, organizing and designing tasks, drawing inferences, creating and building interpretations, revising and editing, and interpreting data. Presents a classroom example of a panorama…

Considers the pedagogy of teaching theater to college students who will be secondary school drama teachers, including available instructional materials and lack of methods courses. Calls for creation of a complete pedagogy for secondary school theater. (PA)

Discusses an action research study in which the teacher-researcher consistently explored three phases of readers theater (RT) activities with 14 students in an English-as-a-Second-Language writing class. Positive effects of using RT were found. (Author/VWL)

Describes how the author facilitates drama experiences in the foundations of education courses that she teaches for preservice teachers. Suggests the course helps students gain an understanding of the philosophies of education, the rationale for arts in the curriculum, as well as multiple perspectives of dramatic art, by learning through…