Friday, May 16, 2008

Drama Therapy program in Plano helps at-risk youth

Students are told, "Don’t Drop Out. Act It Out!"

By Jason Rice

PLANO — Some people will do anything to reach at risk kids. These students are at risk of failing and/or at risk of dropping out of school. The root problem may be one of many situations: poverty, lack of adequate sleep or nutrition, behavior problems, a need for glasses, problems at home, family stress, medical issues, poor attendance, peer pressure, and more. In most situations, there is more than one issue involved.

This week two unlikely institutions partnered to bring new opportunities to students from all walks of life, with arrays of obstacles to overcome. Communities In Schools, Dallas Region Inc., a charity service organization focused on helping at risk teens achieve in school and succeed in life, and Rover Dramawerks, a prominent professional resident theatre company in Plano, came together to work with students using Drama Therapy. For the first time in Plano ISD, select students set out to learn about themselves, their options and ultimately how to deal with things perhaps too large to discuss, through dramatic exercises and role playing.

Rover Dramawerks’ Drama Therapy Instructors were able to use and teach the tools of acting and improvisation to pinpoint problematic areas of student's lives, and then go on to illustrate how to resolve conflict through communication. “It's quite shocking at first to see some of the rough experiences these kids have gone through,” warned Jon Mark Howeth, one of the instructors. “But working in an environment where the kids were free from ridicule and encouraged to openly express their feelings and emotions really gave us the opportunity to safely address real problems.”

Sasha McGonnell, Children’s Education Coordinator for the theatre, was excited, “I think it worked beautifully.” McGonnell came prepared with basic ground rules for positive interaction, what seem like standard acting lessons, and a series of progressive activities. “We changed it up a bit and added skits on the fly, too.”

Quipped Mark-Brian Sonna, another instructor, “We’re teaching them to stay positive and work on their feet, to go with the flow. If we can't do it, how can we teach it?” He added, “These are good kids in difficult places. They deserve the effort.”

Over the next few months, McGonnell and her rotating staff of instructors will cycle through a series of exercises that resemble something between “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” and some of the harshest urban slam poetry, yet always with the ground rule that things have to be a group effort, everyone listening and responding to each other, and it has to work out positively. Games range from improvised scenes where participants can only speak using song titles, to a puppet-like exercise where participants take turns moving each others’ limp bodies around and speaking for their rag doll partners as a scene gets acted out.

“We have a very eager group wanting to do these workshops and work with these kids. We also have an actress in our Rover network, Debbie Cheng, who has a Masters from Harvard, specializing in this type of drama therapy,” beamed McGonnell. Cheng helped her draft the initial guidelines and exercises. “We can’t thank Communities In Schools and Plano ISD enough for this wonderful opportunity.”

This story was submitted by a member of the Pegasus News community.

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• Arts > Fine Arts > Theater
• Plano ISD