Upper School Drama
The Philosophy
The Arts & Design Department plays a vital role in helping students make sense of the world and their place within it. Through visual art, design, music, and performance, students explore how human beings communicate ideas, emotions, and experiences—often in ways that words alone cannot. Artistic and design practices teach students how ideas are formed, expressed, tested, and revised, building skills that extend far beyond the studio or stage and into every academic discipline and future pathway.
The Goal
Our courses provide structured opportunities for students to create, perform, reflect, and refine. Students learn to work through uncertainty, take creative risks, and develop confidence in their ability to shape meaning—whether through an image, a performance, a composition, or a designed solution. These experiences cultivate empathy, adaptability, and voice, helping students become thoughtful makers, collaborators, and communicators who engage the human experience with intention and care.
The Arts & Design department provides opportunities for students to practice:
- Creative Self-Expression & Exposure to the Arts: Courses that invite students to explore and communicate their ideas through artistic practice, while also engaging with artistic traditions, histories, and cultures. Instruction balances training techniques with experimentation, ensuring students both build discipline and discover their voices.
- Design Thinking: Courses that cultivate problem-solving as a creative habit of mind, emphasizing iteration, research, testing, and collaboration. Instruction balances structured frameworks with emergent learning in a sandbox environment, where experimentation and play allow students to adapt and innovate.
Note: Students may enroll in a seventh course in the Arts & Design department. Students may also carry an Arts & Design course as their sixth course.
Drama: Contemporary Acting (F)
Open to Grades 9-12
Graduation Requirement: Arts
In this class, students will be introduced to the fundamentals of contemporary acting through the exploration of scene and monologue work. They will be introduced to the classic building blocks of acting, including sense memory, improvisation, and breaking down a script into its component beats in order to properly navigate the text in a clear and concise manner. They will also learn the craft of creating a character. All of the skills and techniques they acquire will be applied to various monologues and scenes.
Drama: Acting Shakespeare (S)
Open to Grades 9-12
Graduation Requirement: Arts
In this class, students will explore how to approach Shakespeare’s plays through the lens of the performer. They will explore proper scansion in order to make sense of the language to express the original intention of the playwright. This will allow them to navigate the text and phrase it in a clear and precise manner so it can be easily understood by contemporary audiences. Students will also explore how the text unveils the characters they are portraying. During the term, the students will perform monologues and scenes from Shakespeare’s plays.
Public Speaking (F, S)
Open to: Grades 9-12
Graduation Requirement: Arts
At some point or another, we are all called upon to speak in public, be it a commencement speech, an assembly, a business presentation, or a toast at a wedding. This course is designed to help those students seeking to improve their skill at speaking before a live audience by focusing on the techniques of voice and body control (breathing, intonation, volume, articulation, gesture, posture) that will give them the self confidence to deliver a successful speech. Students will learn the various forms of public speaking: informative, demonstrative, persuasive, and extemporaneous speeches, as well as learning the necessary skills for one-on-one and team debating. They will examine famous historical speeches and TED talks to decipher what makes a speech successful. Students will experience writing original speeches and presenting them in a public forum. This course may be applied to English departmental graduation requirements in grade 12.
The Composition of Film (S)
Open to: Grades 9-12
Graduation Requirement: Arts
Storytelling has been the lifeblood of civilization. The rules for telling those stories, however, changed forever with the advent of moving pictures. Students will look at the advancement in American filmmaking by viewing, analyzing, and critiquing some of the most important films that changed the techniques of how movies are made from such esteemed directors as Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles, John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock and Martin Scorsese to the present day directors such as Kathryn Bigelow, Greta Gerwig, Spike Lee, and Jordan Peele. They will analyze how film narratives have changed as people of color and women have become major voices in Hollywood. This course may be applied to English departmental graduation requirements in grade 12.
Filmmaking (F)
Open to: Grades 9-12
Graduation Requirement: Arts
In this course, students will have the opportunity to be their own directors, cinematographers, and producers, creating original works and telling myriad stories via the camera. They explore such genres as documentaries, commercials, music videos, and short films and learn the basic principles of how composition, camera angles, lighting, and sound create mood and tone. By using Adobe Premiere Pro, students will be able to edit their assignments into the final product that they envisioned. They will learn about scheduling a film shoot and all of the requirements that go along with that such as gathering talent, scouting locations, etc. At the end of the term, each student will have created their own five-minute film. This course is open to students with all levels of experience.
War in Film (F)
Open to: Grades 9-12
Graduation Requirement: Arts
How is war depicted in movies? Is it glamorized, criticized, or satirized? When are movies used as propaganda and when are they used as a tool for soul searching? Do films influence the decision makers in Washington D.C.? Each generation tackles these and many other pertinent questions of what it means for their country to go to war. In the course “War in Film,” students will study Hollywood’s depiction of war by viewing essential and groundbreaking films from Hollywood’s greatest directors including Stanley Kubrick, Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, and Kathryn Bigelow. This course may be applied to English departmental graduation requirements in grade 12.
American Comedy (S)
Open to: Grades 9-12
Graduation Requirement: Arts
Ever wonder why The Office makes you laugh? Will it still be funny to you in twenty years? Is comedy universal or is it generational? Are the Marx Brothers still funny? Would Stephen Colbert make people laugh in the 1950s? In this course, we will examine and analyze the progression of comedy in American entertainment for the last 100 years from vaudeville to Tik Tok. Students will explore in detail how and why certain comedy was considered funny to audiences by putting it into its historical contexts. We will examine the politically and socially groundbreaking work of Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, George Carlin, and Richard Pryor and how comedy challenged censorship and our First Amendment rights, going all the way to the Supreme Court. At the end of the term, students will be able to clearly understand the role comedy has played in shaping American culture. This course may be applied to English departmental graduation requirements in grade 12.
