Companies currently represented include The Royal Shakespeare Company (The Comedy of Errors, As You Like It), the Royal Court, Almeida Theatre, the Young Vic and the English Touring Theatre. Productions are available as complete downloads (SD, HD) or as streaming media (VOD – video on demand) for reasonable prices (8.99 pounds).

Unfortunately, there are only about 10 shows currently available for download. At the moment this is a bit limiting, but the concept is indeed a great one and this sort of venture should be supported by drama and theatre teachers, as video footage outside of quick YouTube clips is uncommon for productions from well-renowned companies such as these.

All downloads on Digital Theatre are legal with the various copyright holders receiving appropriate royalties.

After spending a few hundred dollars five years ago purchasing old films of the Marx Bros, The Three Stooges, Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, Charlie Chaplin, Monty Python and the like on DVD, yesterday YouTube and an interactive whiteboard used as a projector became a far better option. Of course, other people had ripped and uploaded to YouTube all the funny scenes I had intended to show from the various movies.

But the best part of the lesson was a group of 14 year-olds fully embracing black and white video, and even silent video in the case of some Charlie Chaplin, while laughing hysterically. Even after deconstructing the routines and analysing where the slapstick or satire was evident, the students still enjoyed the experience beyond my expectations when it became academic.

I showed my class the very famous Abbott and Costello routine Who’s on First? as an example of stand-up with excellent comic timing (they are simply standing in front of a curtain when delivering the script), the train scene in The Marx Bros film Go West where they chop up the carriages as firewood for the engine, a number of cream pie fights from The Three Stooges and the cabin scene from The Marx Bros film A Night At The Opera where about 20 people all roll out of the door at the end. Not to mention the globe scene from Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator – in fact this was their favourite comic scene of about a dozen showed that lesson and that alone made my day as a Drama teacher.

YouTube, like Google, is bread and butter Internet use in the classroom these days, but I’d still like to hear Drama teachers share with everyone some of your innovative uses of YouTube in the drama classroom or even simple use of it that turned into great experiences. Comment below.

Initial reactions seem to be what most in the industry expected, including spectacular flying sequences over the audience’s heads and several technical hitches resulting in a number of stops. By Broadway standards last night’s performance may have seemed more like a technical rehearsal than the opening preview, but take one look at last night’s 60 Minutes television footage (below) and its not hard to see why.

The clock is ticking. Only six weeks left to sort out the glitches before opening night on 11 January 2011. For a show this size, it looks like the creative team may be working a little holiday overtime.

The New York Times Preview Review

BroadwayWorld User Message Board

For Drama/Theatre teachers reading this post, the 60 Minutes TV article below, is 14 minutes of behind-the-scenes musical theatre bliss! The footage includes fantastic shots of the Spider-Man scenery at various stages of production. Well worth showing your students.

After several well-publicised and lengthy delays due to everything from bankruptcy to actor injury, tonight’s opening preview at New York’s Foxwoods Theatre will be the first public glimpse of what promises to be the monster of all musicals.

The New York Times reported this week the show’s enormous $60 million budget has blown out to $65 million, while New York Magazine suggested the figure is now more like $70 million. As a yardstick, Broadway’s two most expensive shows to date have been The Lion King (also directed by Taymor) and Shrek: The Musical, both reportedly costing $25 million to reach opening night. Its got to be big when your new show is nearing three times the cost of its closest rivals.

The stunts in Spider-Man are supposedly so spectacular, they’ll apparently leave the flying sequence in Mary Poppins dead on the pavement. Fight scenes circulating above the stalls and flying over the mezzanine level in the theatre are so dangerous, the New York State Department of Labor has the final say over what stays in the show and what goes.

The New York Times and New York Magazine both reveal the first set of images from a show shrouded in secrecy for many months now. The New York Times article interviews director Julie Taymor and co-composer and lyricist Bono from U2, discussing how Spider-Man treads new ground in musical theatre using cutting-edge technology, while New York Magazine’s article is the first in-depth interview with Taymor about the show.

Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark will be further revealed on US TV tonight when 60 Minutes showcases a feature on the ground-breaking musical.

Links:

60 Minutes Preview

The New York Times Article

New York Magazine Article

Vogue Article Annie Leibovitz Photos

More Videos – Official Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark Website

I listened to how iPods and iPhones are being used in schools for projects, how Macbooks and various Apple applications are integrated into teaching programs for a wide variety of learning tasks in everything from Maths to Art, how iTunes U has added academic depth to video and audio resources for teachers and students and there was lots of talk about the growing number of schools in Australia going 1:1 (1 laptop per student).

But after I left the seminar it hit me.

With every Apple education officer in the room proudly displaying their new iPads, no one ever mentioned how new these devices are being used in classroom settings, if at all?

Has anyone got any stories they’d like to share about how they have used the iPad in the classroom with students? Better still, has anyone used an iPad in a drama/theatre classroom with students?

The culprit? Celtx scriptwriting software developed by a team of Canadian software developers and film people. Had I been living under a rock? Why had I never heard of this amazing software before now? Her script looked like a professionally typed industry standard stage play manuscript! This was a Year 8 Soap Opera script for Drama assessment, not a script for a new Broadway play. What was going on?

Celtx scriptwriting software is absolutely free. This is incredible and hard to fathom, because when one realises what an amazing, fully featured, advanced product they have in Celtx, you’ll be scratching your head as to how and why this product is free? In case at this point you’re suspicious of my motives here, no, I’m not being paid to plug this product. Celtx doesn’t need me to promote it, as this software is so good word of mouth should be marketing it all by itself.

Screenplay Example

With the ability to write screenplays, stage plays, A/V scripts, audio plays and comic books, Celtx has built-in templates for all of these formats. Focusing simply on writing for stage plays, the templates meet both US and International (default) standards. The text editor is rich and intuitive, with all the bells and whistles. Best of all, the template realises you’re about to move, for example, from a stage direction to character dialogue and the cursor hits the right spot on the template, accordingly. It is so easy to place either existing content or write from scratch in this editor.

There are also places in the stage play editor to put additional notes about scenes in the script, scene breakdown reports, notations and more. You can even dump images into a sidebar from your computer or the web, such as a costume note in a particular scene with an image of a costume item or prop. The advanced features really are fabulous.

I’m so excited about this product, I’ll be using it for all Drama scriptwriting activities at school from now on. The software is easy enough for students at most levels to understand and yet advanced enough to accommodate professional demands as well.

Celtx is a wonderful product for scriptwriting in Drama/Theatre classes in education and a great way to get students to enjoy using technology with a meaningful purpose. Celtx is a free download catering for Windows, Mac and Linux in more than 30 languages and just in case you need support, there’s online video tutorials, FAQs, a wiki manual and community support forum as well.

Celtx Website

Celtx Download

“The Marketing of Broadway” has a panel of industry guests discussing what is involved in marketing, publicising and advertising a Broadway show; how they work one-on-one with producers and creative teams; the marketing obstacles they face; who their target audience is; how they handle a show that isn’t a hit, or that they don’t like; the Internet’s influence on sales; whether or not a known title helps sell a show; how to sustain the buzz after a show opens; and whether “Broadway” can be sold as a brand.

I’ve watched it and I can highly recommend this podcast. Very educational.

The Marketing of Broadway (190 MB – June 2009)

After a very successful trial, I have a mutually beneficial agreement with the Visual Communication and Design teacher at my school, where Year 10 and 11 students design posters for events in the Drama department on the school calendar. For the students, I provide the poster copy (text) and along with their teacher, they may do a bit of research on whatever the topic is, before designing posters. I effectively become their client for the project and the resulting work becomes part of their assessment in their subject.

It’s win-win for both parties and the Drama department ends up with excellent student-designed posters. I choose the best posters from the class project for display around the school. This may be as little as three, or up to six or seven posters from a bunch of 15-20. I have ensured the students each place their name and subject on the posters, so it also becomes worthy publicity for the students whose posters were chosen for display and the teacher and subject also, for the wonderful work produced. My experience last year was that lots of students and teachers were commenting on the beautiful student posters. After gaining significant attention around the school, the hope is more students will attend the drama event.

I have a Year 12 Drama showcase coming up on the topic of the 1986 Challenger and 2003 Columbia Space Shuttle Disasters and below are four posters recently chosen by myself for display around the school. I seriously recommend this type of partnership in your own school.

Click on the thumbnails for a larger image.

My favourite poster of the four is probably the one showcasing the astronaut’s helmet because of its sophistication in design and reflection in the helmet and background of the the American flag. It is clear the student really picked up on the text “See how NASA failed the American people”.

I love the grey poster largely because the Space Shuttle on the launchpad was hand drawn by the student designer, plus the different colors used in the text, highlighting and differentiating various important words for the reader who quickly views the poster at a glance.

The poster with the astronaut walking appears to be on the moon (but of course, may not be). While research indicates Space Shuttle launches don’t land anywhere in space, but simply come back to Earth again after conducting multiple experiments, the student designer nevertheless got the explosion in the background right. Space in general terms will be swiftly detected by the viewer and considering both Challenger and Columbia exploded (technically, they disintegrated), the flames in the background of the poster indicated this.

I found the final poster interesting because of the fractured nature of the pieces that make up the Shuttle, itself. Although quite literal in its interpretation, I was nevertheless not after artistic posters, and the deisgn of this poster clearly focuses on the disintegration in flight of both Space Shuttles. A minor error is the omission of a “s” after “disaster”, but we have to remember, these are students in the first term of Year 11 learning their craft in graphic design.

The worskhop was based on playbuilding, adhering to the conference theme Turning The Tides, and threw in a bit of recent technology (blogging) for good measure. Conference sub-themes included

• Precious water – drama as essential learning
• Into the sea of discovery – new ideas and landscapes
• Reflections on practice… tales of lifesavers, adventurers and drought busters
• Against the tide – changing patterns, currents and practices through drama
• Surfing the imagination in digital seas – drama and immersion
• Safe harbours – strengthening communities through dramatic processes

The workshop involved participants creating a ship using the technique of silent negotiation. Then some of the challenges the ship and its crew faced were brainstormed. Still images of these challenges (eg. storm, mutiny) were then created by group members using the technique overheard conversations. A vocal collage of various characters’ experiences on the ship were then created (with background music). Finally, scenes were developed and then performed together at the end of the workshop:

Departure (in the style of a documentary)
Voyage (using movement and sound)
End of journey (surreal/dream-like)

While all this was happening, at 20 minute intervals during the first hour, one-third of the group was taken out of the workshop room at a time and introduced to the value of blogging performance-making experiences in the Drama classroom on the Vineblogs website. Blogs on the web can be a fantastic reflective tool in Drama and in many cases can replace the traditional classroom journal in this subject.

The workshop structure can be found on this blog and is a worthwhile activity to undertake with your own Drama students. Check out the Vineblogs website while your there by perusing some of the other performance-making blogs. The site is only in its infancy and is already a friendly drama community of teachers and students at al levels of eduction, mostly from around Melbourne, Australia. We’d love some more teachers and their Drama/Theatre students to join the site with new blogs from other parts of Australia and the world. It’s all free, easy to use and you can be blogging in only a couple of minutes! Blog on and tell us where you’re from!