Bring Berkeley Rep to your school

Bring a story to life! Using sound, movement, dialogue, and improvisation, students turn the classroom into a living theatre, becoming characters in a story chosen from our reading list. This workshop introduces students to theatre and helps develop literacy and communication skills in an artistic environment.

Depending on availability, Story Builders has the option of a bilingual program for Spanish-speaking ELL students.

Note to teachers: You have the option of recommending a story from your class (as approved by Berkeley Rep staff) or you may choose from a list of previous Story Builders literature selections. 10-hour workshops may conclude with an in class sharing of work for other students or families.

How have people managed to make change when they are the dissenting voice? How do we identify sparks of possibility in what can feel like overwhelming challenges facing us today? How do we use theatre to cast forward our hopes, and speak into being a new way of thinking and living?

Using System Design Thinking, History of Change Makers, and playwriting curriculum, our Berkeley Rep teaching artists hope to engage upper middle school students in critical solutions for the challenges we face. Through group work, individual action, and writing we will strive to connect problems with the people they affect and create narratives about how those people might change the world around us, the effect they can have in shaping our destiny.

In this engaging workshop your students learn to express themselves while venturing into the dynamic world of acting. Using acting exercises and scene work, students are introduced to the elements of dramatic action, text analysis, and character development.

Discover spontaneity through Improvisation. Using a series of theatre games, listening exercises, improvisations, and narrative scenes, students learn to communicate effectively and trust their impulses. In this workshop, your students will open up to the kind of spontaneity that breeds better comic timing on stage, stronger reactions in rehearsals, and increased laughter in the classroom.

Bring your curriculum to life! Performance Lab is a program in which middle and high school students create plays that are rooted in a particular topic or theme as identified by the classroom teacher, such as a required novel, a historical period, or a theme inspired by one of Berkeley Rep’s productions. Through interactive exercises, students are taught practical theatre skills such as acting, script analysis, and character development. Performance Lab is offered as a 10-hour workshop and concludes with a culminating event.

Enliven your curriculum through your students’ voices! In Playwriting, students create short texts inspired by a particular classroom topic or theme, such as ancient civilizations or contemporary literature, as identified by the classroom teacher. Through individual writing and interactive theatre exercises, students will explore main events, given circumstances, over-arching themes, character development, obstacles, and motivations as they work towards developing a basic script.

Enhance the student matinee experience with pre- and post-show workshops. Before and/or after the performance, these workshops deepen engagement by introducing, exploring, and further grounding the work students see onstage at Berkeley Rep. Students use theatrical tools to examine the themes of the play, learning how to dissect and articulate their points of view while creating a richer connection to the production.