A Teacher’s Guide for Creating and Staging Original Plays
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Five Minutes to Curtain: A Teacher’s Guide for Creating and Staging Original Plays is an invaluable resource for teachers who wish to create original productions in collaboration with their students. Linda Lori Burgess provides a step-by-step guide to her unique system of developing devised plays, along with solid advice about all other aspects of producing high school theatre; directing student actors and working with tech crews, scheduling and running rehearsals, promoting the play, dealing with school administrators, and making connections to the larger community. Incorporating multiple examples and anecdotes drawn from the author’s twenty years of experience, Five Minutes to Curtain is a blueprint for providing more meaningful and engaging theatrical experiences for participants and audiences alike.
Theatre has always been an art form that can educate while it entertains. It can begin as a tiny seed of an idea that is planted within a small group of single-minded “crusaders for a cause” and it can blossom and grow to reach the greater community of a town, a province, a country and even the world. A short study of theatre history will only underscore the undeniable fact that dramatic art has been a powerful force for social change over the past millennium. The magic of theatre lies where it can enable the passionate voice of the young, the misfit, the disenfranchised, the rebel, in fact, any artist with a compulsion to announce their peaceful protest with the acclamation: “This is my story and my truth!” Indeed, during times (not unlike our own) of unrest, of a need for change, and of movement towards a brighter, more equitable future, the theatre has always played a central role as an enduring, powerful means of expression. It all begins with a play.
READ MOREBut how does one begin to create that play, to harness that magic?
COLLAPSETalia Pura, author of Stages: Creative Ideas For Creating Drama wrote:“The samples and guidance within this book represent years of layered experience, dramatic discovery, playful anecdotes, and sobering truths - an invaluable tool for all directors who dare to embark on roads less travelled. A must for performing arts teachers everywhere.”
“The best instructional books are written by the people that have lived their subject for many years. Five Minutes to Curtain is such a book. Linda Lori Burgess has not only been able to draw on her experiences but is also able to explain the process of creating original dramas in such a way that someone with very little experience will be able to understand and implement her ideas. Brava, Linda, on crafting this incredibly helpful book!”
