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Late last year The Arts Centre, Melbourne, released a wonderful online resource for drama teachers and students called Page To Stage: The Ultimate Performance Toolkit.
This website is suitable for students of all ages, but I particularly use it with my Year 8 and 9 Drama students. The content is divided into a number of sections:
THINK
- Inspiration – image generator of random objects – great for ideas to create scenes
- Improvisation – drama games and great tips on improv
- Create Your Performance – random generator for performance styles, dramatic elements, performance spaces and theatrical conventions – awesome for extended improvisations
- Playbuilding – tips on how to produce plays through improvisation
MAKE
A huge resource section with:
- Fact sheets
- Video interviews with theatre industry personnel
- Charts
- Tables
- Interactive multimedia
- Images from The Arts Centre, Melbourne, theatre productions
…. each covering the following areas of theatre:
- Lighting
- Costume
- Production
- Promotion
- Set
- Sound
ACT
- Manage Stage Fright – useful tips for any young actor
- Page To Stage Community – chart on a map your school and see other schools using the website
MY FOLIO
- School and drama class registration
- Student blog
- Teacher forum
- Student portfolio
My favourite section on Page To Stage is Create Your Performance, where by the press of a button a teacher or student can generate ideas for scene work.
With various performance components being randomly generated (each with a brief explanation for teacher and student), the possibilities are huge. Individual elements can be locked down, allowing certain elements to be generated many times until a suitable one comes up (eg. an element may be too difficult for a Year 7 class). I can certainly say my Year 9 Drama students have not only had fun creating interesting dramas using this generator, but have learned a great deal about theatre-making with new terms and concepts experimented in performance.Page To Stage is a wonderful resource for Drama students and their teachers. Registration, while encouraged, is not essential for using most parts of this website and anyone around the globe can use this free resource and have fun with the plethora of activities it offers.
Hi guys is the website down, can’t seem to open the site? cheers
Hi Jamie, unfortunately this website only lasted a few short years. It was a funded project by Arts Centre Melbourne. Pity, because it was a wonderful resource. Even archived “snapshots” of the website on the Internet only land on a placeholder page and nothing seems to work anymore. – Justin