Arts-in-Ed | Shearwater Productions

Holly Adams in her studio recording an audiobook

“On the Spectrum” and On the Stage

May 5, 2014

My wonderful and amazing students from “A Class Act” with The Magic Paintbrush Project performed on April 27th (a play they wrote!) and hit the ball out of the park. They were amazing, they were incredible, they brought the house down. And every single one of them has a disability. I wrote about them last fall, when we were just beginning our process (see “Life is Washable”), but as a result of the show, folks have been asking about children, challenges, and performance, especially children who are on the Asperger-Autism spectrum. I last posted some specific observations and activities about working

Boy stands in front of white board with a science lesson on it

Fourth Graders and the Magic of Theatre

December 17, 2013

(Music plays) “The Earth is a magnet. It’s the (beat) third planet from the sun. Flowing electrons and protons/come together to make things run!” The Kid Scientists and Benjamin Franklin sing valiantly through an explanation of their thinking while the storm rages and the flying kite conducts electricity down to their home-made motor. The adults watching in the seats of the professional theatre are grinning, completely enchanted as the first group of fourth-graders performs the play they wrote, with an important plot-driving song, thank you very much. I am once again at the Hangar Theatre for the Project 4 performances,

Labor and creativity: Changing spaces changes where you are

September 1, 2013

This week, I want to remind you of what I have just been reminded of—that a shift in our physical working space or place manifests in a shift or working thinking and an increased capacity for creative problem solving. As an arts-in-ed fanatic, I know (thanks to neuro-research) that using arts modalities to teach academic content uses multiple neuro-pathways, creates emotional engagement, and is based in interrogative process, rather than passive information consumption. The amazing Gary Anaka, a leader in the area of brain research and thinking processes, says that when the body is moving, the brain is engaged, and

A group of editors around a table working

Theatre Ed: making it happen

July 14, 2013

I have spent the weekend with 15 driven, crazy, garrulous, impassioned, over-scheduled people who have one thing and one thing only in common: the belief that all children benefit from theatre education. We work from noon on Friday till 10:30 p.m., 8 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. on Saturday and 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Sunday. We work in committees, we work as a large group, we go to drinks at 10:30 and inevitably talk shop (usually social justice issues in art accessibility). We do the heavy duty work in prep for our annual Educators’ Conference (in NYC this year)

Group Playwrighting with Kids!

July 7, 2013

There are at least three excellent books on playbuilding: Playbuilding by Errol Bray, Building Plays by Michaels and Tarrington, and Theatre, Dialogue and Community: The Hope is Vital Training Manual by Michael Rohd. In a nutshell, there are three steps: I. Building a common skill base and creating a project outline. III. Filling in the scenes and developing the script. IV. Troubleshooting/Keeping the faith (rehearsing). Most of you have your own rehearsal practices and probably have targeted performance skills you/your artist are teaching, but I have learned that the idea of having the kids ‘write the play’ is still daunting.

Girl editing green screen on her computer

How to implement a class film project

May 13, 2013

Here are some whys and hows on using film with youth from guest blogger Rebekkah Adams! Working on a video project in the classroom can seem like unwanted stress, but really it is the same as any other undertaking. At the most basic level, the process can be split into three phases: pre-production, production, and post-production. Each presents unique challenges both within the student body and with the project itself. Pre-Production: Script or Treatment Phase Every good project begins with a plan. While it’s important to allow students to create this themselves, it is usually beneficial to have some guidelines

A young boy paints in an arts in education poster

Advocating for Arts Education

April 21, 2013

Okay friends, it’s the time of your school districts are making plans for next year, Arts Advocacy Day just happened here in the USA, and politicians are planning for fall elections before people check out for the summer. Therefore, this blog is devoted to fabulous writings and research on the importance of arts education and arts at the heart of common core academic learning. First off, there is an awesome cyber clearinghouse for arts research, and I highly recommend it if you are a one-stop-shopping kinda person: www.artsedsearch.org Here’s a portion of a recent research posting on said site, with

Holly in a classroom teaching 4-grade students

Rigor and Joy: Teaching 4-graders how to make art

December 6, 2012

From mid-September through mid-December, I am a teaching artist in six fourth-grade classrooms, twenty contact hours per classroom (theoretically). The project involves using performance modalities (usually as alternative learning strategies) to co-teach academic and social content, then facilitating the creation of an original piece about that content. I have been happily doing this project for 15 years. Normally, I love this project and look forward to it every year. I love rediscovering the material through students’ experiences, I love mid-wifing their process of becoming artists, writers, performers; it is such an honor. I look for ways to grow and tailor

Crisis in Education

September 30, 2012

“Art is the Queen of all sciences, communicating knowledge to all the generations of the world.” -Leonardo DaVinci By any definition of ‘Youth at Risk’, the percentage of those who graduate from high school is doubled—doubled!—when those students are coming from an arts-rich school environment. At-risk students in arts-rich school environments also get better grades, have better attendance, are more likely to take upper-level classes and succeed in them, and on, and on, and on. Dr. Donna DeSiato, Superintendent of East Syracuse Minoa Central School District is one of the administrators who has taken the STEM initiative (Science Technology English

Rebekkah, my daughter, poses in her princess costume before a show

The Courage of Art

August 18, 2012

Picture if you will, a starry-eyed performer and teaching artist. The year is 1996, and said artist has been on faculty at the Community School of Music and Arts in Ithaca, NY for about a year. A brand new program, Star Search, has a writer/vocal coach and a dance choreographer, but is without a theatre person…. and thus began my love affair with a project I have done, without fail and with supreme joy, every August since. What is Star Search? Star Search is a no-audition, 2-week camp for kids between the ages of 10 and 16 in which we

Blog