Theatre Arts at The Fessenden School
Performances at our independent school integrate and showcase the creative expression of students in all areas of the arts. Studio art students may create headwear for use in one-act plays. Boys learning digital art may create a slideshow or a highlight video about the work leading up to the Upper School play. And boys in the percussion ensemble may perform as part of the Upper School musical.
Lower School Theatre Arts
Fessenden’s Lower School boys prepare for grade-level productions by learning music and choreography in music class, creating their own costumes and set pieces in art, and researching their characters in the library. When the curtain rises for each of the annual spring productions, boys in Pre-K through Grade 4 are excited and ready to delight the entire Fessenden community.
Middle School Theatre Arts
Students are introduced to the practical techniques and strategies of theatrical performance through theatre games, improvisation, and basic stagecraft. Each semester culminates in an opportunity for the students at our boys school to showcase their learning, whether through a slam poetry festival, student-written one-act plays, or the reimagining of a literary classic.
Upper School Theatre Arts Courses
Upper School boys explore the excitement of theatre arts by choosing from a variety of semester-long electives.
This class explores theatrical scenes that require physical altercations. Examinations could be fist fights between Greasers and Socs in The Outsiders or swordplay in Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac. Actors explore how professionals show extreme emotions without feeling them; how to convince an audience that blows and weapons are landing, when actors are actually taking great measures to keep one another safe.
In this class, students study all aspects of producing a show, including light, sound, set, and costume design. The students in the class put their new skills to work by serving as the Technical Crew for mainstage theater productions.
Students are the cast of the Upper School play, which is generally performed in late November at our independent school near Boston. In addition to two class rehearsals per week, the cast holds after-school rehearsals during “Tech Week,” which is the week of the performance.
Students are the cast of the Upper School musical, generally performed in late May. In addition to two class rehearsals per week, the cast holds after-school rehearsals during “Tech Week,” the week of the performance.