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I took my first job teaching theatre after returning to Alabama in 2004. Although Chelsea High School had a theatre class offering, I am proud of the program I built while there. By the time I left in 2011, I generally served 100-120 students a day in Performance, Technical Theatre, and Creative Writing (the latter two classes I introduced while there).
From The Comedy of Errors (2008). This was the first year of a technical theatre program; it offered the opportunity to construct a larger set than in previous years. We opted to set the play in a New Orleans-like setting.
Loving Lives (2010). The show, by Vermont playwright Alan Haehnel, tells the story of the last broadcast of a floundering 1940s radio soap opera. It's a truly amusing- and, in my opinion, an under-produced- show. At top right is CHS alum Ashley Knowles (2010), who is now an associate director of TADA Youth Theatre in NYC; she writes of her experience in my class here. At bottom left are Chris Copeland (2010) and Laura Thomas (2012), both of whom are now professional musicians.
Paul Sills' Story Theatre performed as both a full-length, two-act play as well as our 45-minute one-act for the 2010 Trumbauer Festival. Chelsea was awarded Best Ensemble at the State Festival that year.
The unusual style promoted by Sills is an effective tool for training actors, and remains one of my favorite methods to teach and direct. I often return to his scripts to use with students in class, as his stress on storytelling and physicality remain an effective approach to teaching performance to young actors.
In 2011, I broke a pledge I had made to myself not to direct Romeo and Juliet. I'm glad I did so. We set the play in a classroom (English teacher Lauren Battle joined the cast to perform the prologue), and the families became social cliques.
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