The Theatre Classroom -- Theatre Etiquette

Now that you have discussed the importance of seeing plays and writing critiques, the next order of business is to talk about theatre etiquette.  We are living in a time of cell phones and short attention spans, neither of which make good audience members. Watching a play requires the audience to listen and react, not talk, text, and/or eat. 

In the early 70's I decided, along with the administration, to have all of Sentinel’s students attend one play a year.  Not only did it introduce them to the wonderful world of theatre, but it taught them that behavior in a theatre was much different than that in a football stadium, a basketball court, or a pep assembly. Incidentally, it also helped finance the drama department.  See Chapter 2 Four ways to help defray cost of production on page 22 in The Drama Teacher’s Survival Guide.

Before the first play of the year I would discuss Being a Good Audience and give each student a handout based on the information that they were to keep in their notebooks.   

My Future Blogs

I have just been cast in the musical A Christmas Carol so my old bones will be trodding (or maybe I should say barely treading) the boards once again. I will try to get a blog out in November but don’t know how much time this new adventure in community theatre will take.