I'm nearly done with my first teaching adventure. After this week, there will be a week off and then I'll have one remaining week with my students before their play is due. I'll admit, I was scared stiff my first day, but I feel like I've finally hitting my stride and really loving this whole experience. This week we've been workshopping their plays, and by far this has been where I have felt the most helpful. We've been raising stakes, making relationships more clear, and finding endings, which happens to be the most difficult part of the task for the majority of them (hey, me too!). I've been trying to show them that the clearer the relationships are the the audience, the clearer it is what is a stake within the play, and I've already been blown away by improvements they've made just with a small bit of tinkering. For ending plays, I ask them what the characters want, and then I tell them end the play when they either definitely get or definitely don't get what they want, and then they're like, “Oh, that's it?” Never stops amazing me how complicated we make simple things. I absolutely feel like I overcomplicate endings, and so it's been helpful for me to hear myself say that advice over and over. And it also seems to really be helping the kids too, which is pretty much the point, so hooray!
There are some really exciting scripts that they're, it's going to be hard to walk away when my six weeks are up. But, it will also be nice to sleep in past 6am.