Roanoke Children’s Theatre

Good news! The Roanoke Children’s Theatre has not only announced their plays for the season, they have also released their class times and dates for any child who wants to get involved!

  I spent four years in the drama department while I was in high school. Every student that participated in the Drama Club has learned something or has been creative on or off-stage at some point during any given production. It takes many people with many talents to put a play together and be successful.

 Here is how you get to use your strong and weak intelligences in a theatre company.

§  Verbal Intelligence: Most plays have some form of speaking, except for ballet. It’s not just practice for the actors either. The backstage hands have to know when to perform certain functions and you can only do that if you have read the script. Actually, the majority of the cast will end up memorizing most of the script from memory.

§  Logical Intelligence: This comes into play when building and designing the set. You have a certain amount of space, materials, and a budget to rely on.

§  Spatial Intelligence: In order to draw attention to the play, you have to give the audience eye candy. This is done in the decoration of the set, costumes, make-up, and actors movements on the stage.

§  Interpersonal Intelligence: A play does not do well unless everyone works together as a team! Many times, you are working with people that you don’t normally pal around with on a daily basis. This is good and will come in handy in the working world.

§  Intrapersonal Intelligence: When actors study and create their character, the person draws in emotions and feelings from their own experience and from watching other people. Many of our class activities involved improvisation and memory recall to create the character.

§  Musical Intelligence: This is obvious for musicals. However, music in ANY play can help create the mood and set the tone for the audience. If you listen to the dialogue during the play, you will notice that there is a musical quality to each person’s character voice.

§  Kinesthetic Intelligence: I have never seen anyone in the company sit still during productions. For actors, movement and conveyance to the audience is very high. The actor has to understand why they are moving and the motivations of the character.

§  Naturalist Intelligence: There is an order to which things are done. There is pre-production preparation, production, and post-production tear down. Since many schools are going green, the company has to watch how it disposes of materials and find ways to reduce, reuse, and recycle.

Scene from Madeleine.