Great Lake Theatre Company coming to Aurora and interacting with students

Have you ever performed with professionals? Well at Aurora High School, the freshmen English teachers, Rob Abrecht, Karen Baker, and Lisa Gorog(substitute teacher for Jeness Kington), obtained professional actors from Great Lakes Theatre Company to come in and perform with the CP 9th grade students.

In order to be able to have professionals from the Great Lakes Theatre Company come and interact with students, the freshmen English teachers had to fill out a grant.

Albrecht explained, “Last year I got an email from the Aurora Schools Foundation saying that the organization was accepting grant proposals for the 2018-2019 school year. The grant proposal had to be for something classroom related and out of the norm of the regular school activities. At about the same time I got an email from the Great Lakes Theater Festival advertising their Shakespeare in the Classroom program. It seemed a perfect match for the ASF grant. I wrote up the grant and it was accepted.”

After watching the students interact with the professional actors, each teacher found that the interaction provided students with new understandings.

Baker stated, “The highlights of the performance was definitely seeing the students perform on stage. My favorite was the party scene, where students learned to dance.”

“The highlight of the three days, for me, was the final days where all of the kids in the class were dueling with "swords". They were using short pieces of PVC pipe wrapped in foam insulation. They had to learn the choreography and then one student from each group had to create a death scene,” explained Abrecht.

Gorog stated, “The highlights included reenacting scenes donning costumes, learning the rituals of dueling during that period of time and practicing with props, watching the professionals act out the balcony scene between Romeo and Juliet, acting out a scene in which half of the class were Montagues and half Capulets--being put in different scenarios that we would act out (like being a Montague that sells food but doesn't want to sell to a Capulet even though the Capulet was hungry, thus, starting a fight in the "streets").”

As can be seen, having the professional actors interact with the students and teach them different approaches was successful and the freshmen English teachers would completely have the Great Lakes Theatre Company come back.

A student from CP 9 English stated, “The Great Lakes Theater actors helped me learn Romeo and Juliet, by acting out scenes and having the actors explain them. I thought is was a fun and creative way to learn part of the play. From the dance, we learned to the sword fight. The actors did an amazing job acting, which made the experience much better. I would like to thank them for their time and effort they put in to teach use the classic play, Romeo and Juliet.”

Albrecht stated, “The kids seemed to have fun. I hope they can come back next year. Their program usually runs five days but because of MLK Day and a snow day, we were only able to work on three days.”

Another student from CP 9 English stated, "The Great Lakes Theater actors helped give me a better understanding of Romeo and Juliet. They did it in a fun way and not a boring way. There were swords, dancing, and other things that helped make the experience better."

“Yes! We are hoping to have the program back next year. It was very inspiring for students to learn from professional actors,” explained Baker.

Overall, having the Great Lakes Theatre Company come to Aurora High School was a success and teachers want to continue doing it over the next couple years. The students did not just get to act with professionals, they were able to be taught new approaches to acting, learn new rituals, and how to invent their own scene.