Ms. Schurdak has been working as an administrator with this age group for over 20 years and is excited to join Pingry, having been struck “by the commitment of the Middle School faculty to educating middle schoolers… They are both serious and joyful about their work.”
Drama
As a part of the academic curriculum, the four elective courses that comprise the Drama program in the Upper School demand that the students use themselves, express their unique personalities and life experiences, find their own voice in the service of artistic creation. In a real sense they are the primary material of all the Drama courses. At the same time the courses in the program require that the students learn a discipline, a craft that develops a variety of personal resources and academic skills: listening, concentration, physical flexibility, emotional self awareness, openness to others, critical reading skills and analysis, problem solving, etc. At the core of the work is the development of the dramatic imagination. This kind of learning is unique to the dramatic arts.
Unlike the other academic disciplines, Drama is always about the “Other.” This requirement to involve, acknowledge and, at times, sublimate the “Self” in favor of the “Other” makes the Dramatic Arts and its most visible creation--the stage play--an invaluable experience for young adults. The student actor is trained to place his attention on the other actors in the scene, to react to what is happening in the other actors. In a larger sense a Drama Program that stages a variety of challenging plays gives the actors and the school community (the audience) a chance to participate in the “stories of others.” It brings the larger world into the smaller world of the school.
Drama teaches its varied “lessons” by having the students “do it.” Personal and artistic growth is “tested” by having the students continually put their “knowledge” about themselves and their craft to use in daily exercises, scene study performances and staged plays.
Drama Courses
- Creative Dramatics (#10735)
- Introduction to Acting (#10745)
- Advanced Acting (#10755)
- Play Production (#10765)
- Technical Theatre (#10795)
- Movement for Actors (#10794)
- Theatrical Design and Technology