The Rashi School | Classroom Blog

This year I have had the opportunity to work with the lower school students on their wonderful After School fall show, The Twelve Dancing Princesses . I am the Production Assistant for the show. As somebody who has worked with Bonny in the Rashi School Theater Program for a very long time, I love seeing all the students show their love for theater every Monday. It brings me so much joy when I get to work with them and give them acting advice, the helpful tips and tricks that I was taught when I was younger by the student leader helping out. I love being able to work with the students and gain closer bonds with them as both a regular student and a role model. I choose to work with these students because I know how fun and exciting drama can be especially when you are a part of a younger age group. I feel like the older you get the more awkward or ¨embarrassing” certain shows and roles can be, which can affect your acting because it might be a little out of your comfort zone. This parti...

The Middle School After School Drama Elective will be presenting "The Trumpet of the Swan" in November and the students are hard at work staging, designing, creating and learning many theater skills that can be used during the performance process.  The following information has been submitted by our Grade 8 Student Officers who are members of the International Thespian Society (ITS) in the Rashi Middle School Theater Program.  As we get ready for our Fall show, we’d like to share a little bit about how we’ve been preparing for it in the tech booth. The lighting system is mostly up and running again as it was taken down at the end of last year for lighting maintenance. We’ve been working to arrange it in a way that is comfortable for the technicians in the Tech Booth to be able to program the lights for the show. We’ve also been gathering and designing the sound cues, and we’re getting ready to program them into the soundboard.  Ari I - ITS President - Class of '24 In the ...

The Rashi Theater Program is off to a great start for the 2023-24 season. Along with grade level plays that happen throughout the school year, we have a very busy elective program.  In the Middle School, the students are working hard both in-school and after-school on the production of "he Trumpet of  the Swan.   After-school there are 27 students, in Grades 5-8, that are working on both the staging of the show as well as the technical production.  Twelve Dancing Princess Cast The After School Drama elective for Lower School will present, Twelve Dancing Princesses  in December. There are already 24 students, in Grades 3-5, on Mondays, busy working on staging. The Middle School students, in Grades 6-8, support the show during their electives programs.  MS Afterschool Technical Elective The Tuesday Middle School elective is working on props and costumes for The Trumpet of the Swan .  They use the Design Thinking Protocol to understand the needs of the sh...

Rehearsal for Grade 2 play  As part of the Rashi Theater Program students learn the skill of playwriting.  This process starts in Grade 2 with their work, "Diary of a Rashi Second Grader." In this process the students learn about monologues and dialogues and how to write in the basic playwriting format.  In Grade 2, the diary entries become their monologue.  Monologues are a great way to talk about emotions and express what the "character" is thinking.  They learn that dialogues are just a conversation.  We work on this process together as a big group and we spend time talking about the possible topics for the dialogues and then brainstorm character options, setting options and list a few facts that can become the main part of a character's speech. Students learn that anything can speak in a play, yes even a rock or the Charles River.  The best part is watching the "voice" of the character come alive as they practice saying the line and writing what th...

This past Sunday after the last Middle School performance of "Once Upon a Mattress", nine Middle School Students were inducted in the International Thespian Society.  This organization recognizes excellence in theater for both Middle and High School Students.  Rashi has been a member of this organization for nineteen years.  To become a member students must be in at least two full length productions in the areas of acting and technical work.  Many students earn their membership participating in their sixth grade year by participating in the Fall Play, State Drama Festival and Spring Musical.  Students are eligible to use all three years of Middle School to earn their membership.  Students in Grade 8 are eligible to become officers of the Rashi Theater Troupe and are elected by the outgoing slate of officers.  The officers plan the theater trip, invite alumni back to shows and help to oversee the running of the drama festival.  A few years ago the ...

  The Rashi Middle School won a Gold medal this weekend at the State Drama Festival.  The cast and crew of "Skidmarks, A Play about Driving" performed at Dover Sherborn Middle School on Sunday with five other schools from around the State.  The judging is done with professional adjudicators with a rubric and Rashi finished with a high score in the Gold medal Category.  Rashi also walked away with the Stage Manager's Award, a coveted award that is presented by the Stage manager of the Host school to the school that showed excellence in management of their backstage during the performance as well as the technical rehearsal.  This is the 2nd year in a row that Rashi has earned this award. Congrats!! There were also three All-Star Acting awards presented to Oliver L, Nate P and Stella S for their strong character work as well as their ability to play multiple characters during the show.   The students had a great day watching all the other shows as well as...

Eleven Rashi Middle School students will be participating in the Massachusetts State Middle School Drama Festival this weekend.  The Festival is held at 6 different sites across Eastern MA.  We will be at the Dover Sherborn Middle School site on Sunday, May 7th at 2PM.  Our one Act Play, "Skidmarks, A Play About Driving" by Lindsey Price was chosen by the Middle School Festival Elective as one of three possible choices.  The entire elective is student run with Bonny, the Director and Mike, the Tech Director acting as advisors on the process. The students choose the show, cast the show, design the show and stage the show.  The students have learned how difficult it is to a choose a show that has enough to do for all the actors, designers and technicians.  Many of the Grade 8 students have leadership positions such as the Stage Manager or the Student Stage Director, but even some of the Grade 6 or 7 students have taken on the job of coordinating costumes and ...

  Each year as part of the Third Grade writing curriculum the students focus on the differences between a Fable, Folktale and Fairy Tale.  The students read a mixture of Fables and Folktales and then learn how to take a story and develop it into a script.  They start with a storyboard or sequencing brain frame, which focuses on the "What happens next" concept.  They learn the basic structure of a script and start to develop the character's voices, but putting the story into their own words.  They use a bit of basic stage direction and before you know it they are playwrights.  They work on this process in both their Language Arts writing classes and their Hebrew classes.  In Hebrew, they are using vocabulary they already know and work with the Hebrew teachers to assist them with the words they need to learn to bring their Fable to life.  The students learn that when you become a storyteller it doesn't matter the language you speak, but how you tell...

 A group of Middle School Students in grades 6-8 were able to attend the American Repetory Theater's production of "Life of Pi" recently. This production is currently in preview before it goes to its new home in New York at the Gerald Shoenfeld Theater in March 2023.  The story was adapted from the novel by Yann Martel for the stage and first opened in London and is the winner of 5 Olivier Awards (equivalent to our Tony Awards).  We were able to see it at the A.R.T. in Cambridge during its North American Debut and after the performance there was a demonstration on how they make and use the puppets for the show. "It was interesting to be able to see different elements of acting, puppetry and tech (lighting and projections) to tell the story of show.  The script was well written and it kept the audience engaged and entertained as well as kept an element of surprise all throughout the show. Not only was the puppetry demonstration interesting, but they brought life to th...

Each year the Middle School students have a Shakespeare residency that progresses through each of the grades.  The work is a collaboration between the Language Arts classes and the Theater Department.  In Grade 6, the students are introduced to Shakespeare, who he was and how his use of language is both beautiful and complex.  The students will work on monologues from various plays, giving them an introduction to the language and characters.  As they work with the monologues in both prose and poetry, they discover how the words can be taken from the page to the stage and expressed with their voices and bodies.  The 6th grade students will be participating in this residency in March. First Rehearsal for Grade 7 In Grade 7 this year, the students studied an abridged version of "Romeo and Juliet" and worked on scenes from that show.  Discovering how the charactes can come alive through the words.  The students shared these scenes this week and gave reflec...

 The Kindergartners are busy preparing for their production of "Stone Soup".  The performance is based on the original story that was written in 1947 by Marcia Brown, depicting soldiers traveling to a town,  looking for food and were turned away from the townspeople.  The soldiers create a soup using water and soup and convince the townspeople to add to the soup until finally they have a delicious soup which they all can share.  Our Rashi story is adapted by Bonny Parlee using animals as the main characters.  At Rashi we are always striving to make our world a more fair, kind and inclusive space.  You will see this theme in our production. The Kindergartners have been working with Bonny and Nick Linder on how to use their bodies to move like the animals they are portraying.  They have been memorizing lines and learning how to project their voices on stage as well as learning simple choreography for each animal.  In Hebrew with Ari Marcovski t...

  Trying on Costumes for the first time! The Lower School After school Drama Elective has been working on "The Rainbow Fish" to be presented on Wednesday, December 14th at 2PM and 7PM.  Middle School students have a chance to work with the Lower School students during rehearsals.  They help with acting coaching, backstage management and in some cases they work on design for the Lower School Performances.  Hear what our two Middle School Production Assistants have to say about the Lower School Drama Elective. Submitted by Oliver L, Grade 8: Production Assistant and Light Designer At Rashi, the Lower School Students have many options for After School Electives. One of these incredible activities they engage in is the Lower School Play. This year’s play is The Rainbow Fish . The story follows a special fish, Rainbow Fish, in an underwater kingdom, who thinks he is better than everyone else due to his shiny, colorful scales. After an incident, the whole kingdom ends up ...

 On Wednesday, December 7th at 8:15 the First Grade will be presenting "The Mitten".  The script is based on the book by Jan Brett and adapted by Bonny Parlee for the Rashi First Grade.   Progression is built into the Rashi grade level performances and the first graders will be saying a line by themselves for the first time on stage.  They have been working in the theater this past week and learning where to stand to say their lines, how to project their lines by using a big voice, the importance of facial expressions and body language and how to become a storyteller on stage.  The production is a collaboration with the Classroom Teachers, Music and Hebrew Departments.

 The Middle School After School Drama Elective will be presenting "A Wrinkle in Time" on Wednesday, Nov. 16th at 1:15 and Thursday, Nov. 17th at 7PM.  The students have been hard a work over the last seven weeks working on auditioning for parts,  technical designs for scenery, sound and costumes, staging the scenes and working on lots of tongue twisters as well as focusing and acting exercises. Students in the tech program afterschool start their rehearsals with the cast doing the warm-ups and exercises together.  Many of the MS students work tech for one show and then act on stage for another during the season.  This way everyone has a chance to gain some acting skills as well as building team cooperative skills. " This week in tech we did a lot with the help and supervision of Mike and we built set pieces." - Arlo Rogloff - 8th Grade.  Students work with Tech Director, Mike Finke on the proper and safe use of power tools and use these tools to build many ...

Rashi Middle School Students are busy working on the upcoming play "A Wrinkle in Time" to be presented on November 16-17th.  Students are able to work behind the scenes by signing up for two different in school MS electives classes.  The Tuesday elective "Props and Costumes" and the Friday elective "Technical Theater Design" have been working the last few weeks designing for the performance.  Students in the electives have identified the costume, prop and scenery pieces that they are working on for the eight week electives.  Using Design Thinking they have started the process by learning the wants and needs for a show and talking to the Directors (their clients) to understand the vision for the show.   The start of the process includes research using the script to learn about needs for the design and the internet to learn about the time period of the 80s  for the show settting.  The students also created a Mood Board for costume inspiration. Worki...