It's been a few days... maybe even weeks... since I kept you informed about my volunteer work at Newton Middle School. I decided that the school needed a drama program. Because of a lack of funding in our Littleton School District in the performing arts, a drama club disappeared from Newton. I felt that it was important to me and important to the school that I generate interest. After putting out an announcement and with the help of Debbie Getzel, the Gifted and Talented teacher at the school, we attracted close to 30 kids. Of course, some of them dropped out. That comes with the shifting of middle school interests. It was no surprise to me that the majority of the kids in the club happened to be girls. That's no surprise. It's quite normal for a drama club to have more girls than boys. In fact, most of our plays in Pioneer Drama Service have more female roles than males. However, many of the parts are flexible. The most difficult aspect of the club is the limitation of time. This is because the club can only meet once each week and can only meet for an hour. To work with this I chose a large cast melodrama that was 30 minutes long. The show is THE PAPER BAG BANDIT, a melodrama by Tim Kelly. Tim was a genious when he was writing plays. When I asked him to write a 30 minute play with a lot of characters, Tim came out with this melodrama and RASCALS UNDER THE BIG TOP. I have started rehearsals and they are going fairly well, though some of the kids have not started to memorize lines. A lot of this is because I didn't put out a decent schedule. I'm going to pull out a number of our play directing textbooks and will work on being more organized. (I've listed a number of the books below.) I wasn't surprised at the high energy the kids have. However, it's working to control the after-school energy and get the kids in the same track for an hour. Things seem to be shaping up. To add to this, I started an olio group as well. This group meets on Tuesday. They are taking short comedy skits and a large variety of jokes for blackout purposes and making it into a nice selection of olios. Want to know what an olio is? Or facts about melodrama. I also have links to other sources. | 
