Series

Week 9: Designing the Theatre Performance Season

4 Min Read  •  Arts Appreciation

Welcome to The Art of Curriculum Design: Designing the Theatre Performance Season

In this six month series explore the fundamentals of curriculum design, via an Arts Appreciation course created through arts collaboration.

The first few weeks were devoted to the “how and why” of the curriculum design process.
The Art of Curriculum Design
The Art of Curriculum Design: The “Why”
The Art of Curriculum Design: The “How”

Then, we looked at applying the Plan Like an Artist method of Curriculum Design to create a secondary level Arts Appreciation course.
Arts Appreciation: Planned Like an Artist

During the current portion of the series, we are looking at weekly objectives, outcomes, and assessments designed for the Arts Appreciation course (links to the entire series can be found below) The full curriculum, including daily lesson plans, handouts, and assessments, will be available at the completion of the series.

Remember:

-When Planning Like an Artist, everything is designed with the end performance in mind. So, as the course was designed, we remained focused on the ultimate aim of this course and the final assessment/performance task; how the students are going to demonstrate the aim.
-Aim: After this course, it is our hope that students have the ability to articulate an appreciation of all art forms, while defending artistic preferences.
-Final Assessment/Performance Task: Students will design an arts company and create a performance season utilizing a common theme, based on their personal artistic preference. They will then present their performance season to a board, in the form of a proposal, for funding as a way to articulate an appreciation of all art forms.

Arts Appreciation Weeks 1-5

The first 5 weeks of the Arts Appreciation course provided the foundational information for students to participate in viewing, and discussing art in preparation for building their own arts organization. For instance, Week one built a class definition of art, while the second week focused on applying the class definition to artistic work. Then, the third week helped students to identify artist intent. Students should be able to identify the intent, defend the intent, and determine the effect of artist intent on the emotional landscape of the art as viewed by an audience, and as viewed through the lens of the class definition of art.

Through the viewing of controversial art, students continue to defend what they believe art “is” and “is not,” and acknowledge the emotion behind the art, as well as identifying the artist’s intent. Moreover, by taking a look at a theme, students will conclude the fourth week with the foundational information needed in order to actively view art. The ability to identify the theme behind the art will help students to create their final project.

Finally, the goal of the fifth week was to start helping the students profile their arts advocacy, by brainstorming the ways in which they want to showcase art for their final assessment. This involved composing an artist statement, determining the theme of their performance season, developing their artistic brand, and drafting the mission and vision for their arts organization.

The next portion of the Arts Appreciation course takes an in-depth look at Theatre, Dance, and Music. Through analyzing these three performance arts, students will begin to develop their final project which is a theme-based performance season for their arts organization.

This is the final week reviewing theatre, so the main focus will be solidifying the theme for each student’s performance season, and determine the theatre pieces that will be involved in their performance season.

Week 9: Designing the Theatre Performance Season

Objectives:
At the culmination of week 9, students will be able to:

  • Articulate comprehensive reviews of theatre performances
  • Determine official theme for their performance season
  • Defend theatre choices for their performance season
  • Connect theatre choices with their class definition of art
  • Design an artist statement for the pieces they have included in their performance season

Week 9: Designing the Theatre Performance Season

Outcomes:
At the culmination of week 9, students will demonstrate:

  • Clear understanding of artist intent for each theatre piece chosen
  • How the artist intent fits their personal definition of art
  • How the artist intent connects to the theme of their performance season

Week 9: Designing the Theatre Performance Season

Assessments:
At the culmination of week 9, students will be evaluated on:

  • Descriptive artistic statement for the theatre portion of their performance season
  • Defense of the chosen pieces and how they fit the performance season theme
  • Defense of how the chosen pieces fit their arts organization brand
  • Advertisement for the theatre pieces
  • Gallery walk responses to colleagues theatre performance season advertisements

Series Links
The Art of Curriculum Design
The Art of Curriculum Design: The “Why”
The Art of Curriculum Design: The “How”
Arts Appreciation: Planned Like an Artist
Week 1: What is Art?
Week 2: Talking Art
Week 3: Artist Intent
Week 4: What is Theme?
Week 5: Profiling Yourself as an Arts Advocate
Week 6: Introduction to Theatre Arts
Week 7: Understanding Theatre through Scripts and Structure
Week 8: Viewing and Discussing Theatre

Next Week: Week 10 Introduction to Dance

Week 10 of the Arts Appreciation course, including lesson plan objectives, outcomes, and assessments.