My school no longer had a formal theater program when I was hired, which is surprising and sad since Bob Fosse is an alum. So I was brought in to restart the school’s theater tradition. The fledgling program we're building is extremely student-driven. In the theater, students are encouraged to push themselves outside their normal comfort zone and learn skills in an unconventional way.
Usually our class is all hands-on work, remote learning has made this a challenge.
We no longer have access to our theater, where we held class daily. All work is now being done remotely through computers, chat, and video discussions. Students can't learn lighting in the theater with the actual fixtures, and it just isn't as fun to only read about it in a book.
My Project
While remote learning, we no longer have access to the usual supplies we had in the theater. Our current unit is teaching design, but we can't teach lighting design without being in the theater space. To teach this remotely, I am going to build a mini stage and install LED lights to it.
These supplies would be used to build the structure of the stage, where we would then attach different LED lighting configurations to it.
Students can then try out different lighting combinations with our mini stage. Instead of just learning about lighting design on paper, they can see their designs actually completed... even though we no longer are in our theater space.
This box will also be used once we are back in the classroom for design work while in the drafting stage, before we transition it to the mainstage of our theater.
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