As you have deduced, I have been involved in the beginning of my school year. Quickly stated...really great kids, lots to do, and the schedule just keeps getting crazier. You know the routine, I am sure.
One of the exciting adventures for this semester is our fall play. Well not really a fall play, perse, but a holiday play. We are attempting to put on Dickens' A Christmas Carol. I spent the last two years putting the script together, looking through various scripts from around the country, rereading the book, gathering music that I loved from the many many many traditional Christmas carols, and coming up with a script that would work with our own kids.
We have been through read-throughs, sharing the adventure with our students, and to say they are excited is beyond the point. They are so excited about using a British accent, about the feeling of the piece, and the kids even brought it to their auditions. We had originally created the piece so that it would be a cast of 25, with 17 of those roles triple/quadrupled cast to play many roles. The problem was that as we got through our auditions and headed into callbacks, we found that there were many kids who would rock out different roles. So we expanded to 31 and spread out the casting love.
The excitement has spread to my other classes as well. After our read through, I searched through various study guides to see what types of projects were available for us to use. There were so many wonderful ideas to get the students motivated. Many of my students had no problem deciding which projects they wanted to do...ranging from creating a Victorian Christmas Cookbook, complete with recipes and food history, to creating a movie trailer of a modern version of the piece, utilizing all of the characters. Students also selected Christmases from around the world and how they differ from ours, making sure to include the traditions of the Victorian time period. They could also do a presentation on various Christmas traditions that we know today and research their history and how they came to be. I even included a music option as well, where students could create themed music representing each of the characters within the play. The student who selected this project ROCKED IT OUT OF THE HOUSE and we may be able to use this within the show...
We had our first read through last week and the excitement that filled my classroom was BEYOND. It is my hope that that excitement extends throughout the entire semester to our performances in December. We are working to find various charities to extend the Christmas Spirit towards, whether it is through monetary donation or through foodbank work. The kids are even knitting scarves, hats, and mittens in my class to use for set decoration that we will be able to donate after the production is complete...
A wonderful project for our semester to be sure...and one I am super excited about.
