School Residencies from Illusion

Illusion Theater currently offers two types of school residencies, lasting from as little as 4 weeks to an entire semester. Current school residencies available 3-5 week Program This residency is geared toward one teacher's or a team of teachers' class. Typically, we work with English classes, Social Studies classes, Drama classes, or other humanities-related classes. We meet with the teacher(s) an average of three times prior to beginning work in the classroom. The purpose of these meetings is to learn the teacher's goals and outcomes for the class, to determine how Illusion fits in with the curriculum, to identify the issue we should be addressing, and to plan the residency. In between those meetings, Illusion chooses the artists (usually three/class) who will be involved, develops ideas for the residency to discuss with the teacher(s), determines the theater's goals and outcomes for the residency, and develops the final structure. Michael Robins and/or Bonnie Morris always works in the classroom in tandem with another theater artist(s). We bring scripts into the classroom that have been developed at Illusion over its 24-year history that touch on the issue at hand. Each residency is carefully planned with the teacher(s) to fit his/her classroom goals and structure, so our working methods may vary from school to school. The number of students we work with also varies, ranging from fifteen to an entire grade of 150 students. We usually begin by conducting a series of games and exercises to introduce the students to theater techniques, enhance skills to be emphasized in the curriculum, and build trust and cooperation. Exercises may include creative writing, drawing, and verbal skills in addition to theater skills. For example, we might ask students to imagine where they'll be ten years from now. In doing so, they may write about it, draw it, or improvise a phone call that takes place ten years hence. We introduce them to Illusion scripts and help them prepare scenes from the various plays. We then ask them to write scenes, stories, or monologues from their life experiences in response to the scripts, to articles in the news, or to our classroom discussions. This activity gets the students accustomed to working with the form of a script, teaches them theater terminology they need to know in order to practice the craft, gives students various insights into the issue at hand, and helps them learn first-hand that a play can take many different forms and still rightly be termed "a play." We then work with the students to develop their own material for performance. This work incorporates aspects of one or more of the scripts they have worked with as well as their own ideas, making the final play as relevant to their lives as possible. We rehearse the play with the students and prepare for a performance. Students learn about playwriting, directing, acting, set and costume design, lighting, promotion and publicity. The play is then performed for the school, with parents and other community members invited. Students also have the opportunity to perform the work for invited community at Illusion Theater. With metro-area schools, we hold as many reheawrsals and classes as possible at Illusion Theater to give the students an opportunity to see what a professional theater looks like and to feel the ambianceAND WORK WITH THE PROFESSIONAL THEATER STAFF We conduct the rehearsal on the Illusion stage. We did this in January with Washburn and Highland Park students. Several years ago we brought two residency schools together to show work to each other and we have continued to do this every year. After the performance, we hold a discussion, giving students an opportunity to learn from each other and make valuable inter-school connections. The classroom teacher(s) is present for the entire residency, learning theater techniques along with the students and monitoring the student