Summer Theater Academy: 3rd-4th grade

By First Stage Children's Theater Lead Teacher "Miss Kim"

This Summer Academy, I will primarily be with the 3rd-4th grade students as their Voice, Movement, and Improvisation teacher. This has been truly one of my most favorite classes to teach. As a former actor, I can remember being completely engaged in the exploration of these three elements of acting. I love the process of trying new things and accepting when things don’t work out and the camaraderie I felt with my fellow actors. I love the flexibility in lesson planning based on the classes’ personality.

Every week is so completely different even when using the same lesson plans- some classes seem as though they’ve known each other for a whole school year, others are complete individuals working in the same room. These two different dynamics really control the outcome of what family and friends will see in the presentations. One of the challenges to teaching this class for the past three years is continually updating and revising the lesson plans.

A few summers ago, the class was using a lot of Improvisation exercises and games and learned more of the technical side of voice production and usage and movement. I also tried more of an abstract version of the class with a focus on spacial awareness and movement and sound through space. We created movement phrases based on songs from all over the world. The children seemed to really like that project. Last year, our focus was on character - how voice and movement affect the audience’s perception of a character and then we applied it to improvisation scene work. Although I’ve found many things that work well over the years (and things that fail miserably!), it is still a challenge to reinvent the same class. But it is necessary as a teacher that I continually challenge myself - as I expect the same commitment from my students.

I look forward to Summer Theater Academy because it is a chance to take a break from an academic focus and teach something that is of great interest to me.