Barstow’s performing arts program and theatre workshops set the stage for creativity, collaboration, cultural understanding and personal growth. Everyone has a role in the Barstow theatre program.
Early childhood students perform and improvise in Creative Movement class. Lower school theatre workshops begin in kindergarten. Middle and upper school students explore classic and contemporary plays, hone acting and scriptwriting skills and apply STEAM principles to set construction and costume and lighting design in a variety of electives.
Barstow Theatre produces five top-notch shows each year, including lower, middle and upper school musicals and student-produced plays. In every division, students joyfully take the stage to gain self-confidence and discover the freedom of self-expression.
These courses train and develop the student actor, while focusing on performance as an activity that leads to enhanced social awareness. Students learn to deliver performances that are truthful, individual and memorable. They develop awareness of all the senses and draw on intuition and intelligence.
This class produces the upper school spring play. Students work rigorously in acting, singing and dancing. This class is for the serious theatre student interested in performing in a main stage production.
This class produces the upper school fall musical. Students work rigorously in acting, singing and dancing. This class is for the serious theatre student who is interested in performing in a main stage production.
This class is responsible for producing Barstow’s main stage productions: The upper school musical in the fall and the upper school play in the spring. This class is for the serious theatre student interested in all the technical aspects of production: scenery, sound, lighting and costuming.
Designed to train and develop the student playwright. Writing scripts may take many forms—scenes, one-act and full-length plays, commercials, short films and feature film screenplays. This course teaches students the fundamental elements of storytelling, as well as to understand basic elements of genres, to sustain an interesting story, to create strong characters, to develop theme and symbols and to structure it all into a finished script. Students participate in the Coterie Theatre’s "Reaching the Write Minds" program.
For the student who enjoys all areas of theatre and would love to learn how they work together. All technical aspects will be covered. Students will learn about script analysis, set design lights, sound, costume and other production elements necessary to produce a play or musical. This class culminates in a full design of a play and the direction of a scene from the chosen and approved production.