2018/2019 Playmaking Final Performances

It’s this time of year again! We’re in the midst of our final Playmaking PS 11 performances, and all is going well.

Daniel Judah Sklar, who created this form of playwriting (called Playmaking), collaborated with Circle in the Square and Manhattan’s PS 11 (elementary school) 18 years ago, which started this program. I joined this team five years ago.

Each year, 10 Circle in the Square Theatre School alumni are accepted into the Arts Education for Actors program (at Circle in the Square), which includes, among other phases of training to be teaching artists, a five-month paid residency at PS 11. The 10 actors become Residency Assistants (RAs), and mentor students as they write their scripts.

Daniel teaches the first three classes of third-graders in the morning with five of the RAs assisting him, while I teach the last three classes, with five other RAs assisting me. There are six classes altogether. Each class gets its own performance on Broadway, and each child in each class has their own original play performed by the RAs/professional actors. After five months of working and bonding together while the kids write and edit their plays, it’s a deeply fulfilling experience for us all.

Daniel’s and my group had our first performances last week. Both of our 2nd performances were today, and both of our third performances will be on Monday. If you’d like to come to a show, let me know and I can give you details.

Watching the kids react to the actors bringing such meaningful life to their words is thrilling and heartwarming. Playmaking focuses on feelings: the kids’ and their characters’. We consider it a great responsibility to respect these young playwrights, their feelings, and the messages they intend to convey in their plays; so to finally see their joy after a lot of work put into this process means the world to us, and me. We will miss these kids!

I’m filled with gratitude for many things: my (and Daniel’s) responsible, caring, enthusiastic, and talented group of RAs; being on the team at Circle in the Square; my friend Daniel Judah Sklar; the teachers and administration at PS 11; and the students, who brought true feelings and honesty to our work every day.

Here’s a photo of my fabulous team and me taken today at Circle in the Square Theatre.

Left to right, upper row: Sara Lily, me, Bryan Songy, Robin Murray. Lower row: Alex Acosta, Molly Williams

The Three Billy Goats Gruff at PS 166

I'm grateful to have worked as a teaching artist at PS 166 (The Richard Rodgers School of the Arts and Technology) yesterday on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. I spent 45 minutes to an hour in each of the five kindergarten classrooms introducing acting and theatre. Since all classes were in the process of reading The Three Billy Goats Gruff, I created a lesson plan with the focus on that story. After a warm up and discussion, the kids rehearsed, then performed in small groups as five characters from the book: the little billy goat; the medium-sized billy goat; the big billy goat; flowers, grass, trees, and vegetables in the meadow; and the troll. It was a delight to work with such enthusiastic kids and supportive teachers. Thank you to Colin O’Leary at Circle in the Square for offering me this fun job; and thanks to PS 166 for having me! 

Photo credit: Jim Henderson