Phew–those Creation Plan-building meetings were dense! After we have a discussion with our students on Spring Day Three, we get definitive answers on what they want their play to be about, asking them to be as specific as possible. Then, our teams meet up for an hour and half sometime before the next class to devise a Creation Plan–aptly named for this 4-week portion of the semester where we “Create” the content of our plays. Then, starting on Spring Day Four, we employ said devised plan.
So, this week we pitched our proposed skeleton play structures to our students and it went pretty well! Tilden decided to do less of the “fantastical world” play than we expected (and that they had voted on), but some students definitely wanted to incorporate some of that into their scenes within the play. This is something I tend to forget until it pops up every spring semester: they’ll say they want to do something, but really they mean something else/different/more specific. For example, Tilden said they wanted to incorporate “fantastical worlds” and we took that to mean something not of reality, but what they really meant (and what it ended up being) was “worlds that are unfamiliar” to our students–and that could be anything from playing elderly characters to setting a scene on a space shuttle. All in all, Tilden decided on a concept that’s pretty darn cool!
Yesterday at Walton, our students devoured our proposed skeleton play structure like they do with their pre-class granola bars! 
In Spring Week Three, we got really specific on what they wanted, so Julia, LaTonia, and I were able to piece together a loose structure pretty easily. When we brought in the plan they went nuts!! We spent yesterday building characters that come to/live in this peculiar town that may or may not have a deep, dark secret–you’ll have to wait for the final show to find out!
‘Til next week!
K
