Students explore the dramatic process through improvisational work with bodies, mind, voices, and imaginations. Through exercises focusing on movement, sensory awareness, oral and written expression, and concentration, students work together to create imagery. They learn how to "stage" their ideas to communicate to an audience, and, in turn, they learn to look critically at the performance of others. Students' own experiences are used as sources, as well as plays, poems, music, and the dramatic material.

Acting is taught through theater games and improvisation. Students develop new characters and work together to dramatize their ideas. Using props, costumes, and settings, the actors will write their own plays using their imaginations.

Experiencing a variety of dance styles, students will move to the recorded music of jazz/rock, as well as a live musician once a week. Students will learn basic dance steps and build them into short dances at the end of each class. Students do not have to be good dancers - just willing to move and have fun with it. Students will also learn how to choreograph their own dances.

Students will rehearse and perform scenes from famous plays. For a culminating project, classes choose from a variety of performance options such as developing individual audition pieces, performing one-act plays, or presenting an evening of scenes for an audience.

Students in this course will study scenes from many different musicals including "Grease," "Big River (Tom Sawyer)," Annie Get Your Gun," and study the works of creators Andrew Lloyd Webber, Gilbert and Sullivan, and Rogers and Hammerstein. Students will work on scene development, the incorporation of music and dance, set design, lighting, costuming, and character development within the scenes.