The path we hope to travel with our theatre projects would take us to diverse audiences throughout our metropolitan area; but we need light! Our school division recognizes the value of a full theatre arts curriculum, one that this year has been rewritten to better serve our students (9th- through 12th-graders) with rigorous, 21st century theatre training.
Our Theatre Program serves not only many students from military families, but many special education students, and those who feel they don't "belong" or "fit in" elsewhere. This training equips these students with skills that can be applied in many careers; skills such as confidence, poise, physical control, and vocal variety. While this curriculum is supported with the most necessary materials, supplies, and equipment the school division cannot provide funds for equipment that will allow us these additional exciting, varied, dynamic performance opportunities.
With this equipment our students will learn how to present to groups of varying ages and ethnicities in a variety of spaces and styles. We will be able to go places we have not been able to in the past and play outdoors after sunset, something we've not been able to do thus far. If "all the world's a stage", as Shakespeare said, our world of stages will be greatly expanded with this equipment.
While we can rather easily travel with the sets, costumes, and props we use on our school stage, lighting system control is a significant challenge. This system is needed in our storytelling to help students convey a theatre piece's elements of time, place, and mood. It will also provide a significant challenge and learning opportunity for our technical/design students.
Your support of this project will encourage my students in several ways. It will reinforce for them the important place the Arts hold in American culture and remind them of our Program's Mission Statement, which states our goal to "create meaningful and exciting theatre" to "help make our community a better place to live". It will also demonstrate to them your belief that we have much more theatre to learn. And finally it will say to these dedicated, hard-working students, "I believe in, and am investing in, your potential!" Thank you, in advance, for speaking to my students in this way.
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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 Mr. Whiting and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.