Month: July 2009

I was ten or eleven years old the first time I saw a real play. It was a university production of Our Town and it was like nothing I’d ever seen. The set was minimal — a few props moved around on a black stage — and the acting was different from anything on tv or in the movies. The characters — their words, their movements, their emotions — were projected into the audience and part of you was carried up onto that stage. I loved it.

A few years later I happened upon an extraordinary drama program in an ordinary high school. My teacher, Kathleen Gallagher, went on to earn her PhD in theatre education and is now a professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University (OISIE, as we like to call it). I studied drama under her in Grades 10 through 13 and learned everything from Stanislavski to set design. Perhaps most important was the introduction to a real local theatre scene such as we have in Toronto. Every year we would see one or two productions as a class, but also had to go to see plays on our own and submit critical reviews. (That’s how I learned about Pay What You Can Sundays at the theatre. Really, check it out.) It wasn’t just about acting, as so many high school drama programs are, but about all aspects of creating, critiquing and enjoying theatre. I thrived in those classes — we all did.