Film imitates life; that's what they say. Using performance theory to tie the lesson together, learners attempt to understand memory and daily rituals as seen in art, film, and life. They read two chapters from the book, watch the...

Bass drum, snare drum, tom-toms, cymbals. Perched behind their drum sets, wielding their drum sticks and wire brushes, drummers lay the grove and are the heartbeat of a band's performance. A dynamic lesson introduces young musicians to...

Your intermediate or advanced thespians choose dramatic scenes to perform in duos, small groups, or solo to demonstrate vocal and physical characterization. Use class time to prepare and rehearse. Detailed rubrics work for peer assessment.

Make The Taming of the Shrew modern and relevant with this outline. Small groups can choose from a list of suggested scenes and update with modern language and settings before acting them out. Great questions refine writing and...

Musical theater is a trifecta, requiring cast members to be actors, singers, and dancers. Help theater arts students develop these skills with a unit designed to prepare them for a staging of a musical.

Kids get artistic as they explore the impact of art materials, sculpture, and performance. They discuss the work of Janine Antoni and then create a performance piece that reflects social or global issues they feel strongly about. The end...

Students explore and analyze the architecture of performing arts facilities to create a replica of a theater. They identify the interior and exterior characteristics of these types of facilities and create a replica of a real or imagined...

After listening to a variety of interpretations of "When the Saints Go Marching In," partners compose and then perform their own renditions of this classic before joining a full-class jam session.

To better understand the cultural achievements of the Harlem Renaissance and become familiar with its major figures, class members examine a painting by Aaron Douglas and a poem by Langston Hughes and compare how the artists develop...

“All the world’s a stage…” What do Leonardo DiCaprio, Heath Ledger, and Kenneth Branagh have in common? They have all starred in modern adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays. After viewing a series clips from modern Shakespeare videos,...

Here’s a cross-curricular program music activity that uses Peer Gynt to engage class members. Groups take one section of “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” choreograph their section of the tune to represent the story as they imagine it,...

Eighth graders are introduced to performance art as a way to respond to important current-day issues in society. Pupils create their very own original art work using photography and poetry. These three lessons do a nice job of, not only...

To demonstrate their skills with traditional and computer-assisted notation, young musicians notate and perform the first eight measures of Friedrich von Schiller's theme to "Ode to Joy."

Get to know the meaning behind the song "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" from the legendary 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. Groups of two take the roles of performer and questioner. Performers sing lines of the song while questioners...

This may be a lot to ask of a high schooler, but then again, who knows? Pupils work in groups to explore, write, and then perform an original opera. They view versions of The Magic Flute and La Traviata, then compose a plot, characters,...

Show your school spirit! Class members use instruments or sing along and employ what they have learned in the two previous lessons to perform their school's songs.

What's the most popular music style in Brazil? What about Cuba? Or the Dominican Republic? An immersive project teaches young learners about the salsa, the samba, and the merengue with research assignments and dance performances.

See the changes, controversy, and innovations that define postwar American art. The onset of the modern art era in American history is well-defined in this slide-show. You'll see how Abstract Expressionism shifted into conceptual, pop,...

Students perform a scene from Shakespeare for an unsuspecting audience in a public setting.  In this Shakespeare lesson, students create a Shakespearean "flash mob" or "guerilla theater" event.  Students choose a...

Students evaluate in class performance of music previously prepared by the ensemble. The rubric and assessment criteria are adaptable to any orchestra setting which allows the teacher to choose music to be assessed. Critical thinking...

Students investigate soliloquies. In this performing arts lesson, students discuss figurative language within soliloquies and then perform a soliloquy to the rest of the class.

Over the course of six lessons, scholars try their hand at composing and dancing after a thorough examination of the famous ballet, The Nutcracker, by Tchaikovsky. Participants watch and discuss the performance of two dances, create...

That old fashioned rock and roll comes alive as theatre arts students prepare to attend a live performance of the musical School of Rock. Packed with both pre- and post-production materials, the guide has it all. Rock on!

Bring the sounds of the deep South vocal blues to the classroom with a Smithsonian Folkways lesson. In preparation, scholars listen to and count the 12 bar blues patterns in several works and identify the I, II, IV, and V chords as well...