Volume 10

Issue 1

Three Problems and Three Plays for the High School Stage

Alex Ates

WESTTOWN SCHOOL

Abstract

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.

Author Biography: Alex Ates

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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