Today I saw a play named, 13, with music by Jason Robert Brown. It was a musical about a young man who is about to turn 13 and the difficulty of adolescence. As soon as he mentioned he was preparing for his Bar Mitzvah, I wondered if the musical would be loaded with a bunch of Jewish references that I wouldn't understand. Fortunately, it wasn't, but the few Jewish jokes it did have, I understood completely.
Here is a shot from where I was sitting. I'm in the second row from the top. Not sure why my seat is so high up, but I'm happy to be in the house at all. This was before the show when they were introducing troupes that won the 'Send a Troupe to Festival' contest. The EdTA raised enough money to send two different trips to Festival this year which was approximately $10,000 per troupe.
Back to the musical. 13 dealt with the angst of being a young teenager, getting your first french kiss, the awkwardness of puberty and the cruelty of young people. It was really a fun adventure about adolescence told through song and dialogue and I just truly enjoyed it. It was perfect for this age group audience. It also dealt with popularity, disability, lying, deception, image, climbing the social ladder & being true to yourself. I also really enjoyed the simplicity of their set that consisted of one major backdrop with a crossword puzzle and throughout the play different words were highlighted that were being referenced in a song. I also really enjoyed the songs and found the script to be particularly funny for the teenage crowd.
Today I also attended two workshops. The were both for teachers only and they both proved to be incredibly helpful. In the first workshop 'Imagination Central: Creativity in the Theatre Curriculum' we were provided resources from a teacher who had worked in the classroom for 40 yrs. who gave us different pointers on how to develop our program. He also agreed to send me (and others) all the documents he had at home from this workshop and another workshop he taught yesterday entitled 'How to Develop Your Theatre Program'.
The second workshop was the best workshop I've attended at 'Festival'. It was called 'Best Practices for Your Theatre Group' and was also for teachers only. We brainstormed and created 5 imaginary classes that we wish we had before we stepped into the theatre classroom. Then the instructor helped facilitate a forum where all the teachers in the workshop shared different ideas from their program that proved to be successful for their students/community. I was typing so much information down it was hard to keep up. To simply allow a group of 15 or so theatre teachers from all across the country to share ideas with one another is a great way to exchange meaningful information. We discussed APPS that work for our smartphones/iPads, we discussed ways to get people in our seats, we discussed fundraising ideas, we discussed ways to find costumes, we exchanged information with other teachers and we simply got a ton of information in a very short period of time. The lady next to me was from Texas and by this evening she had emailed me their Theatre Handbook that is signed by parents and students at the beginning of the year so they all understand expectations.
Lots of great information today and once again too much food. After our 3 meals each day, they have an adult social where we can continue networking and tonight they had another huge spread of food and desserts. I'm not sure why I'm eating four meals a day, including one at 11 PM each night, but that seems to be what everyone here is doing.
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