Perry Heights Middle School's Production of Broadway Lullaby
This senior service learning project focuses on helping the students at Perry Heights Middle School on the West Side of Evansville. We used our time with the students to teach them how to stand and move on stage, deliver lines, develop characters, and many other theatrical aspects. Together, we sat in on many rehearsals, auditions, and readings to achieve our goal with the students.
Perry Heights was founded by Perry Township Trustees in 1939. The school is a middle school, and is home to grades six through eight. The school is a feeder school to Reitz High School. It is also the only one of the middle schools that feed into Reitz with a theatre program.
Our mentor for this project was Sonya Farmer. She is an English teacher at the middle school, and is the head of the theatrics there as well. Mrs. Farmer was very helpful to us by showing how to work with the age group we were involved in. She gave us the fundamentals of how to get through to the students with what we were teaching them, since sometimes sixth through eighth graders can think very differently from high school students. Other than some key jobs, Mrs. Farmer gave us a lot of freedom with what to say and do around the students. She also taught us the value of being a role model, as many of the kids we taught looked up to not only her, but us as well. Mrs. Farmer's daughter also had a large part in helping with the production, so Carly and I considered her like another mentor for the project as well. She attended all the rehearsals and gave us tasks to complete anytime Mrs. Farmer was busy or couldn't address something we needed. (In the picture below Mrs. Sonya Farmer is on the left, and her daughter Mrs. Buttrum is on the right.)
Perry Heights was founded by Perry Township Trustees in 1939. The school is a middle school, and is home to grades six through eight. The school is a feeder school to Reitz High School. It is also the only one of the middle schools that feed into Reitz with a theatre program.
Our mentor for this project was Sonya Farmer. She is an English teacher at the middle school, and is the head of the theatrics there as well. Mrs. Farmer was very helpful to us by showing how to work with the age group we were involved in. She gave us the fundamentals of how to get through to the students with what we were teaching them, since sometimes sixth through eighth graders can think very differently from high school students. Other than some key jobs, Mrs. Farmer gave us a lot of freedom with what to say and do around the students. She also taught us the value of being a role model, as many of the kids we taught looked up to not only her, but us as well. Mrs. Farmer's daughter also had a large part in helping with the production, so Carly and I considered her like another mentor for the project as well. She attended all the rehearsals and gave us tasks to complete anytime Mrs. Farmer was busy or couldn't address something we needed. (In the picture below Mrs. Sonya Farmer is on the left, and her daughter Mrs. Buttrum is on the right.)
Carly and I were a part of the production through various stages of it taking shape. First, we spent some time with the directors in auditions, casting the students for whatever part we all saw them fit for. After auditions, we moved on to callbacks, where the students read lines for specific roles we had in mind. After the show was cast, we began attending rehearsals. During rehearsals Carly and I would talk to students individually about character development, or what they could do to add something great to a scene, etc. We also got to "block" some scenes, meaning we told which students to go where on stage and when during a scene. Anytime we were not blocking something ourselves, we were told to "clean" scenes. Cleaning is the act of telling the students what to change or do to improve their presence on stage, and making sure there are not any distracting elements to any scenes.