Friday, June 24, 2011

Drama Pre College

Another hiatus has come to an end. I managed to put work behind me fairly effectively, although I still have a lot to learn about relaxing and vacation.

This weekend we begin the School of Drama Summer Pre College program. We have a faculty meeting, the students arrive, and then we do an orientation of sorts. I've been doing this program for most of a decade now. I took most of last year off for all that "to did" business. Let's hope this summer is less interesting.

While I have been coordinator of the Design/Tech portion of the program the curriculum, faculty, and staff have varied based on budget and school leadership. We've got a good slate this year. Students will get all of these classes:

  • Basic Design
  • Lighting
  • Sound
  • Technical Production
  • Production Management
  • Stage Management
  • Drafting
  • Stagecraft

The stagecraft class this year has several mods:

  • Lighting
  • Props
  • Carpentry
  • Costumes

That class might also get a chance to build a part of one of our shows. Depends on how the design comes along.

I'm teaching Drafting again. I keep going back and forth about abandoning the hand drawing content and just giving them a CAD intro. In the end I fall back on the manual skills since I think it gives the kids something to show at interviews. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think I can get them to the point of presentable hand drafting faster than presentable CAD plates.

We're also doing a series of workshops this summer:

  • Marshmallow Challenge Plus
  • Dinosaur CAM Project
  • Tie Dye Workshop
  • Applying to College
  • Moving Light Workshop

I started the workshop thing last year to try to make room for things that didn't fit into a class. Sometimes I think maybe we should just do 28 workshops and no classes. Maybe I'll pitch that next year.

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