Jensen Huggins/Special to The Morning Star
This year, Kalamalka Secondary School’s theatrical production class has taken on the responsibility of writing a play.
This has been no easy task. As with the rest of the course, the creative process is very student-led. Our teacher, Mr. Shon Thomas, will point us in the right direction or give us advice, but he is largely a facilitator. The creative process and the ideas we come up with are almost exclusively our own.
The actual process by which we work out ideas is fairly simple. We come up with ideas on our own then write it down, whether we write an outline or scenes. Those are presented to the class where anyone can build on those ideas. Another strategy we use is having large discussions involving many members of the class where we will talk about ideas and add on and alter ideas other people suggest. Because of these processes, our ideas come from many different sources and are built upon by many people.
Dr. Dalia Gottlieb-Tanaka’s group has been wonderful to work with. They provide a perspective on life and experiences that we lack, and add an interesting viewpoint from which to draw inspiration. We have used their stories and life experiences to draw ideas from as well as talked to them about the appropriate way to address issues we plan to address in our production.
Having members of their group in the play itself is something none of us students have done before and we hope that we will continue to work closely with them as this play progresses.
