Episode 92: Directing: Visualizing the Big Idea

Teacher Christine Thornton works in a tiny rural school but that doesn’t stop her from having big ideas for her shows. How does she work with students to visualize a production?

Show Notes

The Drama Teachers’ Resource Room Hairball by Lindsay Price Pictures from Hairball The Monologue Everything Program blockposters.com - Resource for making large posters.

Episode Transcript

Welcome to TFP, The Theatrefolk Podcast. I am Lindsay Price, resident playwright for Theatrefolk. Hello, I hope you're well. Thanks for listening.

This is Episode 92 and you can catch the links for this episode at theatrefolk.com/episode92.

I had a great conversation with high school director, Christine Thornton, and there is so much in this episode. The big thing is that it’s all about the “big idea” and how do we visualize the big idea. There is also a wonderful tangent on stage management interns.

All right. Let’s get to it.

Lindsay: Hello! I am here on the podcast today, on a lovely spring day, and I am thrilled to be talking with Christine Thornton.

Hello, Christine!

Christine: Hi!

Lindsay: How are you?

Christine: I am well. Thank you.

Lindsay: Awesome!

So, the first thing that I always do is I sort of ask people where they are in the world to give people a bit of context. So, where are you?

Christine: I am in the southeast of Saskatchewan, about twenty minutes from the US border to North Dakota.

Lindsay: Awesome. That’s a good place marker – we like that. And how long have you been a teacher?

Christine: I’ve been teaching for seventeen years now.

Lindsay: When I went and looked at your school, your school is very small, isn’t it?

Christine: Yeah, it is.

Lindsay: And it’s a K to 12 school, right?

Christine: That’s right.

Lindsay: Ah. What is it like? So, what do you do? What is your specific field?

Christine: Well, I have a BFA in Theatre and Design and Direction Performance, and then I have an Education degree in Arts Education, and I teach pretty much English from Grade 7 to 10, and then I am lucky enough to teach all the fine arts, including a theatre program which is quite unusual in a small rural school, but we’ve had a very active theatre program here. Well, actually, this is our tenth anniversary this year.

Lindsay: I think that’s awesome and I think that’s something that’s sort of we’ve got lots of folks who are sort of one-man bands in rural areas, you know. It’s kind of good to be able to say, “Look, it can be done,” right?

Christine: Yeah, absolutely, and I know when I first started, the first teaching job I had was actually on a reservation school here, not far from where I am now, and it was extremely isolated. And, at that time, I started something called the Drama Teachers’ Resource Room Online when the Internet was all brand new and it was like an e-group, and that group now, I think, is the biggest group in the world of drama educators and, mostly, it is people who fit that exact description that you just did – they’re one-man shows, they’re in a small school, the only one sometimes in their district – and that has been a really great resource, not only just for me to be able to provide it but also the collective resource that comes from that number of people. I think there’s over 700 drama teachers on that.

Lindsay: Christine, say the name of the site again.

Christine: It’s called the Drama Teachers’ Resource Room.

Lindsay: Awesome.

Christine: Yeah, and, actually, I think it’s called Drama Teachers – I’d have to check it for sure, but I think it’s just called Drama Teachers. It’s something that I just kind of started. I was very active on and then kind of got busy and had kids and kind of didn’t manage it anymore and it just kind of grew and I was running behind the train.

Lindsay: Amazing thing is that it still exists. The thing that I have found in talking with teachers i...