Take the stage with drama electives

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Tyra Gwalthney

Senior Liz Jebran performs a monologue in front of the Drama Major class. Part of the exciting curriculum of the drama elective courses is to present and preform monologues in front of your peers.

Lights, theater, action! The Drama department is ready to welcome new students to their exciting courses for next year. All grades can participate in these fun, interactive courses. Even if you are not interested in becoming the next Leonardo DiCaprio, these classes can teach you about much more than just acting.

Introduction to Acting, a minor course, helps students get in tune with the physical and emotional aspects of a character. Through practicing various monologues and creating a portfolio of all the work that goes into discovering and analyzing a character, students learn to take constructive criticism from peers and overall become much more confident with performing and acting. This course is open to all grades.

Advanced Acting follows Introduction to Acting (the prerequisite to taking this course) and builds off of the skills taught in Introduction, while developing these skills by doing more challenging monologues and plays. This is also a minor class.

Design for the Stage/Stage Crew is a minor class open to anyone interested in stage design, stage crew, lights, costumes and make-up, or anything that has to do with theater production, minus the acting part. It offers hands on projects to show all aspects of the theater world that many may not see or think about.

Theater students tend to come out, whether or not they go into theater, with skills that put them in great positions for future careers.

— Mrs. Andrea Roney, NPHS Theater director and drama teacher

Drama Major is the only major drama-related course offered at the high school and can be taken in both your junior and senior year; the curriculum is based on a two year program, 2016-2017 is the History and Creation of the Modern American Musical and the 2017-2018 year will be American Theatre and how American Theatre artists found our voices on the world stage.

“A few years ago, I asked the drama major class students, many of whom have gone off to top theater schools around the country, ‘why [is] taking a theater class important?’” said Mrs. Andrea Roney, head of the theater department and all the drama electives at North Penn High School (as well as an English teacher). “And what they came up with was [a] list, and that is: communication and public speaking, time management and organization, team work and collaboration, job interviewing preparation and practice, and, on top of that, empathy and social interaction.”

Having taken some of the theater classes myself, I completely agree that taking these courses will definitely improve on your public speaking and time management skills. Although a majority of these classes are minor courses, they still involve quite a bit of work and research, but in the end, they will greatly improve on skills that not only improve your acting abilities, but they help you with qualities you must be skilled in to succeed later on in life.

“In a generation where people are texting and emailing a lot, having that sense of empathy and social interaction is really important. That list is confirmed by educational research that has been taken about theater and music courses,” Roney said. “[Those skills listed above] are all 21st century skills employers are asking for, colleges and universities are asking for, trade schools are asking for, and expect students to have, but they [might not] always have it. Theater students tend to come out, whether or not they go into theater, with skills that put them in great positions for future careers. Students who take theater and music courses, by average, score 100 points more on their SAT tests.”

Senior Elizabeth Jebran, currently enrolled in Drama Major, says her favorite aspect of taking the theater courses is “[that they] improve all aspects [of your life]. The things we do help benefit public speaking, social skills, as well as your professionalism. I think it allows you to grow, which is really cool.”

So if you’re looking to improve your acting in hopes of getting into Juilliard, or you just want to take a more theatrical version of public speaking, you may want to try to fit these classes into your schedule for the 2016-2017 school year.