Theatre is a highly collaborative activity. That means that everyone working on a play’s production works together to create a unified telling of the story of the play. It takes many people to bring a play to life, but all of the theatrical elements (the dialogue, the characters, the scenery, the lighting, the costumes, the sound and music as well as the director’s vision for the story) have to work together to create a clear meaning for the audience.
Use the first 5 minutes of Pollyanna’s production of Through the Slumber-Glass to find clues that all work together to set the stage for the action of the story that is to come. This activity’s complexity can easily be adjusted and adapted to provide similar learning for children in grades 3 or 5 or for older students, but was designed to compliment TEKS English Language Arts and Reading Learning Objectives for Grade 4: