Theatre Arts 1 Student Handbook : An Introductory Course

Midwest Book Review
Young thespians will delight in this updated version of the Theatre Arts I Student Handbook. The text offers secondary students the opportunity to expand their theatre knowledge and experience through improvising and playing theatre games. This student handbook also includes detailed instructions for theatre activities, suggested reading for student actors and directors, annotated scripts for ease in learning and directing, explanations of necessary vocabulary. Theatre Arts I also features poems, plays, and skits. Alan and Penny Engelsman have created a marvelous text that makes the complexities of the stage accessible to middle school and high school theatre students.

Card catalog description
Includes units on all aspects of acting and directing as well as texts of short plays, soap operas, radio commercials, and oral interpretation pieces.


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As a theatre educator forever in search of the perfect textbook/curriculum guide in the teaching of theatre basics and stagecraft, I was excited by the concept of an easy-to-use, well-developed course series that would provide a unit approach full of activities, exercises, and evaluation criteria for both teacher and student. And in some regards, this series by the Engelsmans is just that: perfect. It is rich in day-to-day activities, overflowing in acting exercises and improvisation ideas, jamming with games, skits, poems, and short scripts, abounding with teaching tips and planning ideas, and teeming with units running the dramatic gamut from puppetry and storytelling to play writing and theatre management. Yet, in other regards, this all-encompassing series attempts the impossible by covering far too many subject areas, sacrificing the substance that makes the scholarship of theatre a rewarding and interesting endeavor. Worse still, because the teacher's guide functions without the benefit of being an annotated student workbook, the teacher must use both the teacher's guide and the student handbook to effectively manage the course, working back and forth between them; a cumbersome process to be sure. Theatre Arts 1 works adequately as a basic acting text. It includes well-developed and detailed units on improvisation, theatre games, voice control, blocking, and reading and analyzing a play script. Acting is presented as the most enjoyable part of theatre studies. Students are encouraged, however, to jump right into some rather advanced acting exercises, without the theoretical/historical background necessary for such a move. For instance, in the unit on blocking, students are told to "think like a director" without any detailed description of the profession. Theatre Arts 2 covers far too many topics in a cursory manner to be a vital work. Of particular note is the page and a half devoted to twenty-five centuries of theatre history, and the unnecessary four-page discussion of copyright law under the heading of "Theatre Ethics." And why bother with a unit on storytelling when most of the same techniques are presented in the first volume on acting? The first volume is recommended for the novice theatre or acting teacher of middle to high school level. Volume two, however, needs rethinking before it becomes usable in the classroom. Illus. Charts. Appendix. Note: This review was written and published to address four titles-Theatre Arts 1 Student Handbook, Theatre Arts 1 Teacher's Course Guide, Theatre Arts 2 Student Handbook, and Theatre Arts 2 Teacher's Course Guide.


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