Young Adult Drama Workshop At Library

By Tanjua Damon

A Young Adult Drama Workshop will begin at the C.H. Booth Library Monday, July 30, for middle school students 11 to 13. Playwright Cynthia Haym-Wagnerman is facilitating the program.

The drama workshop will be held from July 30 to August 10, from 2 to 4 pm daily. There are only 15 spaces available to students. There is a signup sheet in the Children’s Library.

The workshop will be a place where students can learn about acting techniques, play theatre games, act out scenes from plays, and work with a published playwright.

“The idea is to introduce them to the theater,” Ms Haym-Wagnerman said. “In a way they can experience it rather than view it in textbooks.”

Concentration and focusing on the task at hand will be important skills for the workshop participants to master. They will learn to understand how the two help in the production of a play.

“They will focus on an activity,” she said. “I want to teach them about how when you are in the theater and in a play, you need an objective.”

Learning how to focus will be a fun task for the students. Many theatre games will be played. The skills learned throughout the workshop are not only for the theatre, but can also be used in everyday life.

“You learn from these games,” Ms Haym-Wagnerman said. “They are transparent to take to other areas.”

Participants in the workshop do not have to have acting experience, but should have an interest in learning about drama and focusing on something. But Ms Haym-Wagnerman wants participants to understand having a fear on stage is natural.

“The have to concentrate on the task at hand. It’s normal to have a fear,” she said. “I want to let them discover by themselves that they have to be doing something. They have to be focused otherwise you are uncomfortable.”

Some of the games will also teach the students how to work off the other characters in the play or situation. “Mirror” is an example of this, where two people reflect off each other as if they were looking in a mirror at themselves.

“After a while you start living off each other,” Ms Haym-Wagnerman said. “The idea is to reflect, not imitate, which is important when you are on stage to respond to each other.”

Ms Haym-Wagnerman also hopes the students will understand the commitment involved in staging a play, whether you are a lead in the play or you  are working behind the scenes.

“Commitment, more of an investment,” she said. “That’s the beauty of being able to discuss that with them, to find out what their interests are. This is about enrichment.”

Middle school students can sign up at the children’s library or call 426-3851 for more information.