An Impressive Drama Group!


I had the pleasure of speaking with an incredible young lady yesterday from Pittsburgh who has started producing plays on a veritable shoestring for homeschoolers in her area. The St. Genesius of Rome Theater Group was started in 2006 in order to bring the stories about various saints to life, and to have some fun while acting them out. The remarkable thing is that the founder, director and "producer" Catherine Young was only 14 at the time!

Now a seasoned thespian at age 17, Catherine was able to share with me some of her secrets that work so wonderfully for her group, and which I think might beome a good blueprint for many homeschoolers out there trying to begin their own drama groups.

To begin with, she directs three shows each year: two major productions with an average cast of 60, and one shorter play with perhaps 20 people that they reenact every year for the benefit of a local nursing home. Their production choices are just beautiful: Lady, We Love You: Children of Fatima, Maid of Orleans: Saint Joan of Arc, Valiant Daughter of America: Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, No Greater Love: Saint Valentine, A Light Unto the World: Saint Clare of Assisi, A Model of Humility or To Heaven Through the Window: Saint Gerard Majella. Where, I asked, was she able to find such wonderful Catholic scripts?

I was astonished to hear that Catherine types out the dialogue she hears from the Regina Martyrum Saint Stories on tape, and simply "writes in" enough characters to accomodate everyone in the group that wants to participate! How brilliant is this!! Catherine, still in high school, counts this toward her typing credits.

She went on to surprise me still further. After the script has been completely written out, she sends copies of it out to each participant with his or her assigned part. Over the next two or three months, the children learn their lines at home, coached by their parents. They gather in small groups on their own sometimes to run lines or to assemble their costumes, but they never come together to rehearse the play until two weeks before the show! That's it! Three rehearsals: the first to block, the second to review blocking (entrances, exits, etc.), and then the dress rehearsal is the third! And I thought the Equity schedule was demanding!

But how wonderful is this for an average homeschool mom, already usually exhausted and over-committed? It's totally non-intimidating and doable. Parents are needed backstage to keep things running smoothly, and there are also volunteer technical people. Sets and lighting are minimal. The nuns at a local Catholic high school provide the auditorium free of charge and no tickets are sold, so no royalties are involved. As Catherine states, the emphasis is merely on having fun and teaching others about the lives of the saints..... a winning combination in my book!

And what is this talented young woman doing for her next act? She hopes to begin college this year, one year early! A homeschool success story if I ever saw one!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Classical Music in the Classroom

A friend of mine, who formally taught fifth grade but is now homeschooling, was discussing with me the other day how powerful an effect classical music was in her classroom. She was amazed at how peaceful and calm her classroom was when she started out the day with classical music. Boys especially seemed influenced by it, and she noticed that they seemed to be better behaved and able to concentrate on the mornings she put it on. It got to the point where the children themselves would request the music, and parents started donating more CDs to add to her collection because their children kept telling them how much they liked it at school! It turns out that she was definitely on to something. There have been many scientific experiments that proves that living organisms are most definitely influenced by the sounds in their environment. A group of plants exposed to classical music grew better than another group exposed to rock music; a similar experiment using mice actually had to be cut s...
Read more

The Power of Live Theater

Image
Tonight once again I had the joy of experiencing the power of live theater. It was absolutely breathtaking! Man of La Mancha is playing at The Engeman Theater in Northport, Long Island until August 3rd. I'm not going to write a review because, unless you live on Long Island, you probably won't be able to see it. Which is a pity, because I haven't been so moved by a performance in a very long, long time!! Everyone in the audience gave the show a well-deserved standing ovation! I'm glad I didn't take my younger sons to see it. There were some scenes containing choreographed violence and sexual innuendo. The script places us in a veritable den of thieves and murderers. But then along comes our white knight, our poet Cervantes, with his character of Don Quixote, and things begin to change. People begin to change. The audience begins to change. They cry. They feel. They ponder. One criteria of really good theater is that the audience collectively feels like they are bei...
Read more

Quote for the Day:

I liked this quote so much that I needed to share it.  It's by Ramona Baker,  Director of the Masters in Arts Administration program at Goucher College. "Figure out what wastes your time and then work to avoid those situations and people. When you do something that doesn’t work, learn from it and move forward. I have learned that anger is a waste of my time. Time spent listening to people who always see only dark clouds and half-empty glasses is time wasted. And it’s a waste of my time to take long, soaking baths in guilt and regret while I replay my mistakes over and over in my head." If you'd like to read her whole reflection entitled What I Do Wish Someone Had Told Me When I Was An Emerging Leader, click here . Thank you, Ramona!  This just resonated with me!
Read more