NOV
15

Theatre Things for Which We Are Thankful

By Lavinia Roberts 

Lavinia Roberts is a theatre teacher and award-winning playwright who’s passionate about arts education and about creating zany, engaging, and meaningful plays for schools and community theaters. 

Although theatre can be fraught with drama on and offstage, we theatre folk — as well as the communities we serve — have a lot to be thankful for.  So, this Thanksgiving season, I raise my glass to you — theatre teachers and directors, student actors and all the others — and bestow upon you this banquet of tasty tidbits celebrating all for which we as theatre practitioners have to be thankful!

Creating Community

Working on a theatre production creates a strong sense of camaraderie for the participants involved.  After all, performers rely heavily on one another.  As young actors develop self-confidence on stage, those performers also grow to understand the power of working together.  They see firsthand that a team employing all their unique gifts toward a common goal can create something big, magical, and powerful!

Applauding Failure

Theatre classrooms are a safe space for young people to take risks, express difficult emotions, be imaginative, and explore.  Acting on stage requires young actors to make themselves vulnerable.  During a rehearsal process, actors will explore various acting choices to decide on the strongest one.  So, in order to succeed in developing that role in new, exciting, and surprising ways, they will often fail first.  Every time an actor auditions for a part, they also risk facing failure.  Creating a classroom culture that applauds these failures will support a creative community that reaches greater success.  Being comfortable with failure will also help students when they leave the theatre classroom to be thankful for the power of a good work ethic and positive attitude.

Engendering Empathy

Acting requires performers to put on and walk around in someone else’s shoes.  Developing emotional intelligence — being aware of both their own emotions and others — will be useful to them, both on and off stage.  They’ll be thankful for the range empathy can bring to their acting; others will be thankful, too.

Celebrating Inclusion and Diversity

Theatre is a space where we celebrate a diversity of perspectives and experiences, on and off stage.  Teaching doesn’t just come from us, the educators, but from the pupils, as each student brings their unique skill set and experiences to a production.  When young actors are fully engaged and contributing to the creative process, they are teaching others and learning from their peers.

Developing Listening Skills

Theatre teaches students to be active listeners, to listen with all their senses and really absorb what is being communicated to them.  Actors must listen for their cues.  They also must be in the moment, changing each performance slightly in response to other actors.  This kind of active listening will help students to be better communicators and listeners all around.

Bringing Joy

Theatre is fun!  Despite the myriad of challenges, creating a theatre production is exciting and invigorating for both the performers and the audience who share the show.  And for this, I think we are all most thankful!