Help me give my students the materials needed to create basic "broadway flats" and modify clothing for costumes! The flats will be good for multiple uses, making this project a true investment!
This project is part of the Black History Month celebration because it supports a Black teacher or a school where the majority of the students are Black.
My Students
The students of our Theatre Club are some of the school's - perhaps even the city's - most well-rounded young men and women. Students of an application based STEM school on tracks to graduate with diplomas awarded for engineering, digital media, biotechnology, and IT-related programs, they maintain honor roll report cards, play sports (football and soccer are well-represented), are class government representatives, work with robotics and write elaborate lab reports, and, this year, have decided they're producing their own student-led theatre productions!
One show under their belts, they are hungry for more and our club has added 15 new members since (total of 71)!
They completed their first production in November, a simple one-act show exploring the relationship of identity on social media versus the identity of who we are without fear. We have a Shakespearean festival that we're participating in, a full-length spring show, a selection for black history month, and student-directed shows at the end of the year - and this all after school, in addition to their digital portfolio building, robotic building (really!), and chess competitions.
My Project
Our last show was low-budget (read: anything that wasn't lighting, sound, or projector came from the pockets of friends, family, teachers - or even recycling cans!) and we recycled old, folding tumbling mats as "walls" and got as creative as we could with the rest of the set. For our upcoming two-act show, we'd like to incorporate some reality to the set by building a few stock broadway flats, which are lightweight, easy to move, safe, and durable enough to be used in multiple shows, making this an investment that will carry a long way for us. The muslin will be sewn together to fit over (and then staple-gunned into) a wooden frame that we can paint over to create scene after scene. With the extra muslin (a heavy-duty fabric), we'll also be able to craft some small props and, with the sewing machine, modify clothing items and eventually create whole costume pieces.
Students will be learning some classic "home ec" skills that mostly go untaught in schools anymore - sewing and building being key, with the bonus of learning about set design (measurements and engineering, color play, etc).
They will have the experience of physically creating set pieces with their hands, as well as costume pieces eventually too, getting a break from the digital and virtual worlds to reclaim some of those analog skills their generation is often left out of.
DonorsChoose is the most trusted classroom funding site for teachers.
As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Ms. Sharkey and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
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