We did it! We went to State in UIL Theatrical Design! This is our second time to state in Theatrical Design for Set Design and our first time to submit a scale model. So many of the skills I acquired this summer aided in the ability and confidence to teach my students a new concept.
We also did really well in UIL One Act Play. We advanced to Bi-District with The Revolutionists by Lauren Gunderson. We did not use one of the set designs from class for this production, but we did view some of them in rehearsal. One idea from a student that was in Advanced Theatre and on our UIL One Act Play Production team did become our commanding image for the show. Images of the process are included in my portfolio under Design Research and Works.
I struggle with the idea of letting competitions be the basis of the success or failure of my program, but the recognition was a boost in morale to my small group and led to a noticeable increase in the number of students that participated later in the school year.
The skills and knowledge I learned in this class last summer have revolutionized how I will teach this class from this point on. My students don’t love the modified Script Analysis, but they do understand its purpose and used the print outs of their analysis to guide their set designs and discussions.
I was really impressed with the magazine images that my students chose for their set designs in Advanced Theatre. Although it was difficult to guide them away from “obvious images” like pictures of Marie Antoinette (she was a character in the play) and cake, I was eventually able to guide them towards texture and line instead. As you can see from the images attached to my lesson plan, some students really struggled to move away from more realistic images in their set, but, for the most part, their designs were unlike anything I had seen from my high school students before.
I was right that they would thrive with an oral presentation of their designs, as opposed to a written component. They still struggled to put into words what they wanted to say, but it was a far superior analysis of their work than what they would have included in a written report. I am sad that I totally forgot to record their presentations and include them in my portfolio. On the other hand, I was less than pleased with their lack of theatre vocabulary in their presentations and will strive to include more lessons on that in the future.
I know that next year we need to work on vocabulary, principles of design and elements of art. This basis in theory should help them as they move into more practical applications of the craft. I also intend to include the Color Theory and Color Wheel projects in my Advanced Theatre and Tech Theatre classes early next year. Again, a better basis in theory is needed to make these classes as successful as possible.
-May 2022