AUG
24

Building Community in Your Theatre

No doubt you’ve experienced the magic of theatre.  You’ve seen a variety of people with different backgrounds, different strengths and different interests all work together on a theatrical production and end up feeling more like a single, united community than a cluster of individuals.  By definition, a community is a group of people with a common interest, but we know it’s so much more than that.  It’s a sense of trust, care and support that makes a community thrive.  As a teacher and/or director, your leadership and efforts can start to build that desired sense of community within your theatre program far before the curtain rises on opening night.

When your group convenes that first day, you know you’re going to see everything from over-confident showing off to hesitation and uncertainty.  It is your leadership that will get this collection of individuals to start thinking and acting like the cohesive group you will need to put on a play or musical.  First and foremost, you will need to establish ground rules for this community so that everyone can feel safe.  (You can read an article about this from the last issue of the newsletter.)  Of course, you have some rules already in mind.  However, if you can also involve the students in creating the rules, they will begin to take ownership of the community and in a subtle way, already feel like they are a valued, respected part of it.

Once the rules are set, it’s time for everyone to get to know each other better.  Engage the students in ice-breaker activities that will help them learn more about each other.  One idea is to have the students sit in a circle and give answers to three or four questions, such as:

• Your name
• How many shows you’ve participated in
• Your favorite play or musical
• Why you are here
• One thing about yourself that no one in the room knows
• The funniest thing that has ever happened to you (maybe in the theatre if all have previous experience)
• Which famous actor you would want to play you in a movie of your life and why

Use your imagination for these questions.  Choose ones that will most likely get your students to have fun without judging each other.  If you can start each day with a quick ice breaker, you’ll soon start to see new relationships forming.  Laughing together is a powerful tool to break down barriers and build bonds.

As your production moves forth, continue building the community into a tight-knit team that can work together.  Get students interacting more by having them step out of their assigned role, so they can understand and respect each other’s importance in the community.  This means your actors might help with set building or your crew might join the actors in an improv game.  You can assign roles or have them draw on their strengths and interests; anything that helps them realize that each position in the theatre is significant to the final production will help them accept and appreciate one another.  This will also help them take ownership of the production by giving them choices and more responsibility.  Watch carefully for students who are loners and encourage them to do projects that require them to work with other students.

Other ways you can get students interacting are:

• Get your students talking about how they work together.  Invite an elementary class or the school newspaper to engage your students in a group interview.
• Encourage your students to share their ideas with the group.  An “all ideas are valued” policy will help students feel that they can be accepted and confident to open up within the community.
• Challenge students to teach another student a new skill.
• Take pictures of the group as they work together and post the photos around the theatre, on bulletin boards, etc.  so that the students can enjoy them.  Make sure you have lots of candid shots where the students can see the progress of their work and how everyone is having fun working together.
• Create a social networking page for your group where students can interact online.
• If a student has to miss a day, have another student (or several students) contact that person and let them know they are missed.  This helps make sure that each student knows that they are an important part of the community.
• Play team building activities such as Trust Fall or The Human Knot or silly and imaginative games like Grog or Mafia.

As your community progresses into a cohesive unit, remember that some down time together will help your students interact in a more casual and friendly way, solidifying their sense of community.  Some suggestions for this include:

• Taking regular breaks during rehearsals.  Even just five minutes can give students a chance to share a moment together.
• Have your parent volunteers bring in lunch on a Saturday work day and have everyone stop for an hour to eat and socialize
• Plan an outing, such as bowling, after rehearsal one day to get out and spend some time outside the theatre.
• Plan theatre “club” events like game nights or movie nights.  Add to the fun by dressing up in costume!
• If you have the space for it, create an area outside the work area where students can relax with each other, do homework and talk.

Bottom line, the more you can get all of the students to interact one on one with each other, the stronger the community you will build.  And when show time comes, your community will shine with the magic of theatre!