Acting Out! and The Smart Alec’s Sleeping Beauty

Acting Out! is back in full swing through WYO PLAY’s partnership with Sheridan County School District 2. The after-school program features residencies at each of Sheridan’s five elementary schools.

Through weeks of creative work, students in each residency perform a play for their families and fellow after-school participants. In previous years, students have devised their own original plays over nine weeks while working with a teaching artist.

This fall, students at Meadowlark and Sagebrush Elementary Schools have been learning acting techniques, theater terminology, and traditions under the direction of Arianna Thurow and Robyn Murray. Both groups are preparing to perform The Smart Alec’s Sleeping Beauty, a fractured fairy tale written by Mariah Beachboard and licensed through Drama Notebook on Oct. 21 and 23. In this playful retelling, the narrator and jester are constantly at odds, a frog makes an unexpected appearance, and Prince Charming can’t quite get his timing right.

This school year, Acting Out! students are working with a teaching artist over six weeks to produce a prewritten script. Throughout the program, students develop theater literacy and creativity, build social and emotional skills such as empathy, awareness of cause and effect, and self-management, and practice physical movement and expression.

Students also take part in a field trip to the WYO Theater’s Backstage Tour, which offers a behind-the-scenes look at live performance.

If you would like your 3rd-5th grader to be involved with Acting Out!, contact your after school program coordinator.