WESTTOWN SCHOOL
There are plays and musicals that are produced consistently every year—even every decade—by United States high schools. This article identifies three problems with that predicament: 1) the educational theater industrial complex, 2) the 24-year delay, and 3) dissonance from contemporary diversity efforts and standards. In the second part of the article, the author engages in reflective practice as a high school educator. The analysis fixates on a “reverse engineering” process where three new plays by professional playwrights are incubated directly for a high school stage in conversation with the school community.
**Note - this article is only available for download as a full PDF because the text would lose meaning without the tables embedded as the author intended.
Alex Ates is the director of Pre-K-12 Visual and Performing Arts at Westtown School. He has graduate degrees in interdisciplinary study from New York University and directing from The University of Alabama; his undergraduate degree is from Emerson College.
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Cover image from NYU’s Program in Educational Theatre production of R(estoration) I(n) P(rogress) or R.I.P., a new play by Andrea Ambam, directed by Tammie Swopes in 2023, funded and supported, in part, through the Artist in Residence Program at BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, the Howard Gilman Foundation, Mertz-Gilmore Foundation, and the Jerome Foundation.
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