7th Grade Performing Arts: May 2009

Friday, May 15, 2009

Poetry Out Loud with Wilmene Hercule

Wilmene Hercule, 14, prepares for and competes in the Mass. State finals of the Poetry Out Loud competition. She is a freshman at PHA in Cambridge.

The PHA middle school 7/8 poetry slam is MAY 22nd .

Prospect Hill Academy High School Freshman wins Massachusetts Poetry Out Loud Contest
Posted at main website http://www.prospecthillacademy.org/news/ 3.10.09

After an amazing day of competition, Prospect Hill Academy High School Freshman Wilmene Hercule emerged as the clear winner of the 2009 Massachusetts Poetry Out Loud championship. She received a $750 scholarship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council for her win, as well as an all-expense-paid trip to Washington, D.C. to compete in the National Finals on April 27th and 28th.

Over 10,000 students from 61 schools across the state competed this year. First, participating schools held school-wide competitions to select a winner they would then send to the State Semifinal competition on February 28. The 20 top students from the Semifinals continued to compete on March 8 at the State Finals to win a chance to participate in the National Poetry Out Loud Finals in Washington, D.C.

Wilmene's win is a credit to her talent and hard work, as well as to the dedication of her family, friends, and teachers who helped her to prepare for this competition. As every participant, she prepared three poems to perform. As a testament to her commitment and confidence, Wilmene selected the following poems, all challenging and sophisticated: "Sympathy" by Paul Laurence Dunbar, "a song in the front yard," by Gwendolyn Brooks, and "Walking down Park" by Nikki Giovanni.

Friday, May 8, 2009

More Tuck Pics

Tuck Everlasting is the story of a girl named Winnie and a family who she meets, the Tucks. The Tucks have a secret, they're immortal.They drank water from a spring that was actually a fountain of youth. Till the end of time, they will stay that way. Winnie must choose between being immortal and being with Jesse or following the circle of life and dying someday. The Tucks try to teach her how she shouldn't fear death, how they would give anything to die. It teaches the importance and understanding of life and death.It shows that you should not fear death, but to fear an unlived life.

Festival Cast

Tuck Everlasting goes to festival!

We are almost ready to get on the bus and go to the Festival. We have a great script, wonderful costumes an almost portable and detailed set and wonderful actors and amazing stage crew ( yay Jackson!) We will perform for family meeeting 5/6 on FRI MAY 15th and evening performance on MAY 19th 2009 at 6PM.

Prospect Hill Academy Charter School - Drama Club, presents “Tuck Everlasting” a novel by Natalie Babbitt
Original adaptation for stage by Mark Frattaroli and excerpted and adapted for Drama Festival 2009 by Branigan LaCount.

The cast and crew will meet at PHA at 6:45 AM on MAY 9th to take our play to the the 15th Annual Middle School Drama Festival. We will pack up all costumes,props, and sets and travel by bus to Walsh Junior High School www.framingham.k12.ma.us 301 Brook St Framingham, MA 01701 (508) 626-9180

We will not get home until the evening sometime after 7 pm. We are most grateful for the extraordinary generosity and genius of Natalie Babbitt. She gave us her script, her permission to mold her play to fit drama fest rules and her blessing. All this free of charge in appreciation of the work we do at PHA.

And we are most appreciative of the support of Trevor Wrankmore, the amazing kindness and flexibility of PHA parent and professional costumer, Liz Perlman of Costumeworks and Sheila Leavitt, cardboard wizard. Also a shout out and big thanks to Luis Rivera and Joe Harris who have gone over and above to help us.

Branigan

My name is Branigan LaCount and I am the performing arts student intern at the PHA middle school. I am very excited to be back at PHA after graduating from the school in 2005.

I am currently in my senior year at Emerson College in Boston. I am a BA Theatre Education major with a performance emphasis and upon graduation will receive my MA teaching license. I have been involved in theatre for as long as I can remember and have been teaching drama related classes since my sophomore year of high school. I've acted in over 40 different productions, both musicals and straight plays, and have performed in three different countries. Theatre and education are very important to me so I am very excited to be able to combine them in my work as a student teacher at PHA!

Outside of PHA, I am involved in several other areas: Currently, am working toward my goal of founding a children's theatre organization that specializes in working with mentally and/or physically challenged children, by developing a program that meets these goals. My aim is to have the program up and running within the next two years. I am also a drama teacher with the Boston Children's Theatre, working with 4-11 year age group, and I am manager at Coldstone Creamery, where I train new employees, make ice cream, and decorate cakes.

I look forward to a great semester at PHA!

Improv - vocabulary

Accepting - Improvisors need to create a reality that is not really there, without knowing what other reality the other players have in mind. In order to clearly show one united reality, improvisors should be accepting. That is they must listen carefully, play, react, and build every idea they hear or see from each other.
Blocking - not accepting other players` offers - contradicting and destroying what fellow players do or say.
Canceling - destroying what has been established. Try to use all elements that have been introduced by fellow players and realize that contradiction isn't interesting.
Offers – any action or dialog that gives an idea to fellow impoviser and will advance a scene. Usually a good thing. Offers are supposed to be accepted. A strong offer is an offer that clearly gives a direction into which a scene might evolve. An Open Offer is an offer that leaves a lot of possible directions for the scene to evolve in.
Players - students, actors, and people who are engaged in improvising. Schools, groups, actors,theater companies and even companies form "teams" and play together using improv to create scenes, theater pieces and play games.
Scene - a scene is a short-short “story” or exploration about one idea or theme through action and words made up by the players with suggestions from the audience or using an existing story or idea. A scene has a beginning ,middle and end and a who, what, when, where and how.
Wimping – wimping is accepting offers but not doing anything with them. Typical wimping is asking an open Question and leaving the action to be decided by the other player. Another common example of wimping is babbling without making any offer.

Unit 2 - Improv

Improvisational theater or "improv" is a form of theater in which the actors use simple games and prompts to perform spontaneously. Improvisers use audience suggestions to guide the performance as they create dialogue, setting, and plot on the spot. These days "improv" techniques are taught in standard acting classes but also are used in corporate settings, college and any place where creative thinking is valued. The basic skills of listening, being clear in thought and speech and confidently intuitive are part of improv study.

Intuition and creativity can be developed. The best way to improve one's improv skills is to practice. Improv is a skill for all walks and ages of life! In the US impov is best known for its comic possibilities. But there is a serious side to improv as well. People who are interested in social change have used improv and theater to help people think and act in ways to change the world. Agosto Boal is perhaps the most famous and his work is carried on here or www.theatreoftheoppressed.org.? Theatre of the Oppressed is a form of public theatre developed by Brazilian director, Augusto Boal, in the early 1970s. This participatory approach to performance provides a platform for dialogue, critical inquiry, and provides tools for individuals and communities to transform their social realities through direct action.
In a forum theatre model, a short skit is presented for a community that addresses a specific oppression faced by members of that community. Audience members are asked to offer alternative solutions and are invited to directly assume the role of the characters, modifying the outcome of the plot by switching roles with the actors. This process is repeated until the actors and the audience come to a consensus over a solution presented.
We will study improv to exercise our positive thinking and to improve our public speaking and acting skills. We will use games and scenes - comedy and drama and we will create it all. Improv is fun, deep and a skill for life!

7th Grade Performing Arts

Friday, May 15, 2009

Poetry Out Loud with Wilmene Hercule

Friday, May 8, 2009

More Tuck Pics

Tuck Everlasting goes to festival!

Blog Archive

PHA performing arts blogs

Branigan LaCount

Branigan

Monologue and Poetry for Performance

Improv - vocabulary

Unit 2 - Improv

Childrens Theater

LISTEN

“We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.” - Epictetus (Greek philosopher associated with the Stoics, AD 55-c.135)

contact us?

Leave a comment (click on word COMMENTS at bottom of any post) or email Ms. Dooley at: ndooley@prospecthillacademy.org

Unit 1 Heros in Folktales

Unit 4 Scene study

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