With guidance from the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, we engage under-resourced LAUSD high schools in a season-long program that blends Theater Arts learning with English Language Arts learning. We also serve high schools in other districts across Los Angeles County. Through attending plays at the Geffen Playhouse and participating in theater workshops, students are encouraged to open their minds to diverse points of views, reflect on their own personal experiences, and build their creative voices.

PROGRAM & BENEFITS

• Before and after student matinees, students work with Geffen Teaching Artists, who use thought-provoking Study Guides that amplify themes and topics from the plays, help students explore elements of theater, and deepen their ability to experience and respond to the plays.
• Immediately after the performances, the Geffen Playhouse actors, directors, and other artists who have brought the show to life engage students in post-show talkbacks. Students come up with their own questions and the resulting dialogue with the artists helps enhance the meaning of what they have just seen.
• With the plays often serving as exemplars, Teaching Artists guide students to give voice to their views on life and the world by writing and performing their own monologues.

This program is made possible, in part, by grants from the Kenneth T. and Eileen L. Norris Foundation and the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation. This activity is funded in part by the California Arts Council, a state agency.