Part of the mission of The Theatre Museum is to educate students about our rich theatrical heritage and encourage a deeper understanding of the importance of the performing arts. With the help of a team of theatre professionals like Christopher Scott who dedicate their time and energy to teaching directing, acting, and performance practitioner skills to students, the museum sponsored its 2nd year of “Find Your Passion” as part of the Enrichment Program at The Harlem Village Academy Middle School on West 144th Street.

Last year’s program was performance-based and culminated in the presentation of the musical Monstercano. This year’s program was split into two sections, one performance-oriented and one on theatre basics and acting techniques.

The first session began with simple acting exercises focusing on physical work, improvisation, concentration and imagination, developing and strengthening the students’ skills. Building on that basic foundation, text was introduced ranging from passages from Romeo and Juliet to Dr. Seuss to give students practice in performing familiar material and drawing on their new-found skill set to perform unfamiliar text. Like professional actors, students practiced warm-up drills, exercise work and memorized set pieces.

Select students also demonstrated a read-through of a scene from Clifford Odet’s Waiting For Lefty, to show how to start working on a scene and how actors would progress from read-through to development of character and scene structure.

In the performance session of the program the class worked on scenes from Alice in Wonderland. After extensive improvisation the students were still having issues connecting with the text and decided to use their theatre skills to create an adaptation version to make the text more relatable.

The students chose for their performance piece a three-act play about friendship in the inner city written by young people enrolled in a writing project in the Bronx. The next weeks were spent developing the play The Bodega, writing new scenes and expanding the piece from three characters to eight with the students learning the development processes and how to weave issues and conflicts into the dramatic structure.

With a working script in hand, rehearsals began as a set was designed and constructed, incorporating scenery and props. The play was presented to students, faculty and family members and the response was so positive that Enrichment Director, Rachel Leibman, requested encore presentations of The Bodega for the rest of the student body of The Harlem Village Academy.

To further their theatre education, the students were invited to a performance of the Broadway production of The 39 Steps through the generosity of the show’s producers. After their own experience in theatre production, the students were amazed at the theatricality of the Broadway production and the level of commitment required to be a Broadway performer as well as the talent and versatility of the actors. The choice of play demonstrated to the students that a successful live theatre production requires inventiveness and passion and dispelled the myth that audiences require enormous, stagey productions for a true theatrical experience.

The “Find Your Passion” Educational Enrichment Program is a challenge for theatre professionals and their students but finding the right fit of material lead to a deep level of commitment to the project and enthusiastic participation from the students and production collaborators.