Thomas Kelly High School

Northlight Theatre

Grant Amount: 10,000

Kelly and Northlight would like to partner with Northlight’s Speak Up! Theatre for social change residency with Kelly’s Junior’s civics class for 15 sessions, integrating theatre for social change into Kelly’s unit on the Civil Rights movement. Students will explore the role they play in their communities, familiarize themselves with current events through guided research and synthesize their findings through personal story sharing. Students will gain a strong foundation of theatre skill-based learning through ensemble and theatre activities, leading to the creation of a final showcase that celebrates their communities and asks questions about how they can have tangible, realistic, and positive impact where problems exist. We will dig deep into arts integration by including the work of civil rights activists utilizing the historical context when crafting their final performance. We plan to invite parents, and community members that could serve as resources for the students when the residency has ended. The students will also attend a student matinee of Nina Simone: Four Women, a play about Nina Simone’s work during the Civil Rights Movement at Northlight, taking part in a post show discussion and receiving a supplementary study guide. Since the program will commence after the students have completed the semester-long Civics curriculum, they will have a strong basis upon which to build their activist skills.