theater
Drama & Theatre
Click below to explore our instructors and the classes offered.
Backpack Journalist
Linda Dennis
Backpack Journalist
Linda Dennis
Photojournalism is our foundation as found in writing, photography and filmmaking -ie Storytelling.
*New addition. Pantomime, following the Comic Genius of Charlie Chaplin, Making the World Smile Again!
*Storytelling to video/film. Topic to align to classroom standards, utilizing technology to assemble the story, with our Storyboard and editing together images, drawings to create a film.
*Making the World Smile Again. Studying the cinema arts of Charlie Chaplin, and his use of Pantomime, and satire, students in the classroom tell them stories with "magical silence" and movement, and then into a short film, and edited to black and white.
Becky's Box of Puppets
Becky Becker
Becky's Box of Puppets
Becky Becker
Becky Becker is a puppeteer who has been entertaining audiences in the Lowcountry since 1980. Helping children discover the joy of reading and weaving magical tales that come to life before your eyes is a trademark of Becky and her puppets. She believes that one can connect the mind, heart and body through puppets. Her programs are designed to help children build understanding of concepts while working in a playful safe space.
Creating a puppet involves deliberate and thoughtful planning. Scale, dimension, texture, color, materials, and movement are considered. We start with a story, theme or subject. The ultimate goal is to create a puppet that through movement and voice will dramatize or impart information on a said particular story, theme or subject. Students use simple materials to create a puppet of their choice, which will be used to dramatize stories created by teams of students.
Becky works with students in CD-2nd Grades
Creative dramatics at play! Imagination and play acting are the key to unlocking some of the world’s mysteries which help children navigate their world and understand it better. A week filled with puppets, stories, music, and movement spells success as your shining stars explore your particular theme. Past themes have included fairy tales, weather, insects, farm animals, harvest time with pumpkins, apples, and scarecrows. Have a different theme? I’m happy to brainstorm an experience customized just for your students! Each child participates daily as both audience member and performing puppeteer. Each day will feature a new puppet character and a “mini show” by Miss Becky.
Crystin Gilmore Ndiaye
Theatre Artist
Crystin Gilmore Ndiaye
Theatre Artist
Crystin is a traveling actor, director, singer, voice-over artist, acting coach, and motivational speaker. She has over 20 years of experience performing throughout the United States in musicals, comedies, and dramas. She has recently made Charleston her home after living and working in New York City for 16 years. She's excited to bring her life lessons, heart, and the tools she's learned along the way to the talented and creative students that she works with!
Crystin believes each student has untapped potential, gifts, and creativity. Her goal is to create a positive and motivational space for each student’s individuality to shine. She believes the arts establish confidence and group participation through constructive reinforcement and productive learning.
Her goal is to aid and support children as they realize their full potential through the craft of theater.
While each ELE is carefully designed to be aligned with state standards and is customized to your school’s unique objectives, these are just a few examples of the transformative potential that our instructor can craft around your learning targets.
Examples of ELEs:
*The Art of Play: Students will increase their communication skills, stage presence, teamwork, and overall life skills in this ELE. Students will be introduced to theater through the creative writing process. Students will be introduced to 4 Theatre Anchor Standards and have a hands-on approach to creating a play. They will use improvisation and interactive play to create a whole class production. By the end of the week, students will learn and use proper theater terminology, their imaginations, and technical aspects of art to create a one-of-a-kind production.
*Teamwork Makes the Dream Work: Students will be introduced to 4 Theatre Anchor Standards with a concentration on their current lesson plan. They will work together using their imaginations and creativity to produce a story through verbal and nonverbal improvisation. By the end of the week, they will create and perform a production using lights, sound, blocking, and their own script.
Drew Allison
Grey Seal Puppets
Drew Allison
Grey Seal Puppets
Drew Allison is the founder of Grey Seal Puppets, an internationally acclaimed company that creates original puppet theater, on-camera productions, and custom-built puppets and mascots. For the past 30 years, Drew has performed regularly on television and stages, including The Smithsonian Institution and The Philadelphia Museum of Art. Drew has taught puppetry extensively in schools, at conferences, and through his book, "The Foam Book." His work is featured across various online platforms and his website showcases many of his unique creations.
Drew believes that puppetry is a natural vehicle for students to present ideas on current and cultural events through satire, exaggeration, and melodrama. He believes puppets act as a buffer to allow even the quietest students to participate and voice their opinions and ideas in a safe space. Just as he creates one-of-a-kind puppets for his clients, he will create a one-of-a-kind learning experience for your students.
While each ELE is carefully designed to be aligned with state standards and is customized to your school’s unique objectives, these are just a few examples of the transformative potential that our instructor can craft around your learning targets.
Examples of ELEs:
*Perfect Pairing: By pairing puppetry and storytelling, students will take a well-known storyline and adapt it to create a one-of-a-kind modern-day satire while learning to determine the inherent morals and virtues within each story.
*Show What You Know: In these experiences, students will design shadow puppets and collaborate with their classmates to showcase what they have learned about a particular concept. This can be adapted to fit any subject matter and/or inquiry-based student research.
*Make it Tangible: In this ELE, students will grapple with abstract/difficult concepts in a given subject matter. Using personification, improvisation, and script writing, students will bring difficult concepts to life resulting in a deeper understanding of the academic content.
Jeff Jordan
Theatre Artist
Jeff Jordan
Theatre Artist
Jeff Jordan has been a theatre teacher for over 30 years. He has an MAT in Theatre and Speech and taught theatre at Ashley River Creative Arts Elementary for 25 years. He has worked as an adjunct professor at The College of Charleston teaching a graduate level elementary theatre methods class. He's also taught in Dorchester District Two's Gifted and Talented Arts Program. For 30 years, he has been involved in the Charleston Theatre scene working with theatre companies such as Charleston Stage, The Village Repertory Company, and Footlight Players.
As a theatre artist and educator, Jeff’s life work is to help students and teachers unleash the power of theatre into their curriculum. Jeff’s goal with each ELE is to combine the skills that studying theatre can offer with academic content. Studying theatre promotes concentration, focus, communication, creativity, and imagination. It can also promote a positive classroom culture through working as an ensemble. Jeff’s goal when creating an ELE is to collaborate with teachers to design an experience that will help students connect to the academic content in a creative way.
Jeff has a special interest in fairytales, fables, folktales, and script writing, but also enjoys the challenge of building an ELE around science and history.
While each ELE is carefully designed to be aligned with state standards and is customized to your school’s unique objectives, these are just a few examples of the transformative potential that our instructor can craft around your learning targets.
Examples of ELEs:
*FABLES, FUN, AND FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE: Students will dive into Aesop and explore storytelling, acting and play with figurative language as they bring Aesop's classic stories to life.
*SCIENCE SPEAKS AND IT HAS A LOT TO SAY: Students will personify scientific principles and ideas. Students will create improvisations, participate in acting exercises, and create short scripts based on science concepts. Past projects have focused on Forces and Motion, Weather, Air Masses and Fronts, Animal Adaptations, and Ecosystems.
Jordan Maria Giancursio
Dance
Jordan Maria Giancursio
Dance
Jordan Giancursio (Benton) is a local professional dancer and choreographer. In addition to working in a company, she performs in multiple shows throughout the year. As a teacher, Jordan uses her performing skills to create fun and engaging experiences for students.
When creating ELEs, Jordan likes to study the content and create an experience that uses dance and relates to students on a different level. She crafts her ELEs to include movement that stimulates the brain, the body, and learning!
Our Corner Performing Arts
Genese Gee-Schmidtke
Our Corner Performing Arts
Genese Gee-Schmidtke
OurCornerArts creates unique opportunities for connection, communication and creativity. Through theatrical play and exercises, participants are able to better understand self, the community around them, and walk through effective ways to respond to the situations in front of them. Creatively explore how participants have encountered OurCornerArts by visiting our website that ranges from summer camps, workshops, school productions and STEAM engagements.
Participants will create dramatic skits that convey the human spirit and evoke a more empathetic lens to the very REAL stories of U.S. history. Through theatrical exercises and games, students will develop a tool-kit that will equip them for the creation and performance of such dynamic STEAM stories.
Simone Liberty
Dance & Musical Theatre
Simone Liberty
Dance & Musical Theatre
Simone is a teaching artist in Dance and Musical Theatre with over five years of teaching experience in her craft. She teaches with methods that encourage students to practice self-awareness, confidence, authenticity, and ownership. No matter the subject, standard, or grade level, students' confidence will be bolstered throughout the experiences. All experiences will include activities that encourage collaborations in small groups and creativity through student-led creations.
From Page to Stage teaches English Language Arts standards through student-written adaptations of popular or classic children's/young adult books. Students work together to create a script based on one story or book, and then take their script to the stage for performance. Students are encouraged to take ownership of their creativity and ability to conceptualize a performance. Through the experience, students will practice line memorization, stage presence, blocking, and character development while exploring grade-appropriate ELA standards.
For Every Action is a Musical Theatre-based experience teaching science curriculum through the study of action and reaction in theatre. Students will create a unique performance based on science concepts in which they become characters of the earth, the sea, or space. By the end of the week, students will have a 15-20 minute production - complete with song and stage blocking - to perform for their peers.
*For every action can also be taught through dance and choreography creation. Students will be encouraged to explore how the physical world reacts by studying concepts in dance such as time, weight, flow, space, shape, and even expression.
Once Upon A Lifetime is a Musical Theatre experience that teaches Social Studies standards through character development, creative movement, and song creation. Students will explore events and/or concepts through analysis, with the goal of creating a performance based on the event or concept being taught. Students will be reminded to consider: who are the characters and how they move. What do they do, and how do they do it? What is the setting and how do the characters interact with the setting? What similarities and differences can they draw between themselves and the characters? Our time together culminates with a small group or a full-class performance.
Tonya Williams
Theatre & Music Project
Tonya Williams
Theatre & Music Project
Tonya S. Williams is a professional actress, singer, and songwriter. But above all, she’s a true educator. Before joining ECM, Tonya was a certified Theatre Arts teacher for CCSD and DD2 for 7 years. A College of Charleston alumni with a BA in Theatre Arts, Tonya has over 17 years experience training and educating children in the arts. When she is not teaching she is performing all over the Low Country & East coast, singing and acting. She is an independent recording artist (Tonya Nicole) and a Core Ensemble member at PURE Theatre located Downtown Charleston. She uses her talents to infuse Theatre & Music into the core curriculum. No subject is off limits for her. Her lessons are full of creativity; from creating songs & poems, and even SuperHero characters & costumes about Math & Science, to creating & performing skits about historical figures and events. Tonya strongly believes “Creativity is intelligence having fun.” ~ Albert Einstein
1) SUPER POWER - (5th grade Science) Students will use Theatre Arts to explore and demonstrate a better understanding of states of matter. By the end of the week, students will be able to identify and explain science vocabulary words that relate to states of matter and they will demonstrate what they have learned by creating a Super Hero character w/ Superpowers & their costumes, based on states of matter.
2) STORYTIME - (Kindergarten/ELA) Students will use Theatre Arts to explore and demonstrate a better understanding of storytelling. By the end of the week, students will be able to identify key components in storytelling; character, setting, & plot structure. They will also gain knowledge of new theatre vocabulary. As their final project, they will create their own stories and characters with paper puppets.
3) LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION - (3rd - 8th grade ELA) Students will explore drama standards and vocabulary based on their grade level. They will analyze 3 works of theater art. Focusing on plot structure, setting, character, costume design, and other theater and ELA vocabulary, students will recreate stories and perform.