Recreation Guy

Are you looking to offer a different kind of drama program. A radio theater program may just be the thing.

Who is this program geared towards? Well. there are three types of kids:

• Kids that are interested in creating different voices (voice over)
• Kids that love all types of acting
• Kids that want to act but don’t feel comfortable getting in front of a live audience

The first thing I would suggest is to get the book Talking Funny for Money. There’s a lot of neat exercises and information on how to create character voices.

In this class you’ll teach the kids how to create different voices for different characters. I use the exercises from Talking Funny for Money. I also use some different kinds of animals and creatures that I got from a local party store. They’re those little $.50 figures, but you can use dolls, stuffed animals, action figures, etc. I hand these out and have the kids create a voice for their animal, creature or person.

I also use a DVD with old cartoons on it that I bought at a local discount store for a $1 . I play it for the kids and assign each one of them a character in the cartoon. Then I turn down the sound of the TV and let them improv using the voices they created for the cartoon character I assigned them.

Around the third class I introduce them to a couple of scripts. You’ll have to look around for ones that you like and are appropriate for your age group. I use some scripts of a couple of shorter kids plays that I found online. One is Hansel and Gretal and the other one is The Frog Prince.

I then assign the students parts and have a couple of them also help with some sound effects (walking, wind, door closing, howling, etc.). The sounds are done with whatever we have in the classroom.

Next, everyone practices their parts. When I feel they’re ready I get out the tape recorder and microphone

and tape them. They all stand around the mic and say their lines. I bought one of those shoebox tape recorders from Radio Shack since they allow you to plug a microphone directly into it. I also got the mic and stand from Radio Shack as well.

This Radio Theater class meets once a week for 10 weeks. If you know of a recording studio near by and you can get a killer deal because they’re nice or you know someone there, take the kids to record the play in an the studio it is awesome. When I did this they had each student go into the booth and say all their lines one at a time. Then the next student went in and said all of their lines. Later the engineer spliced it all together. It’s a lengthy process and unless you know someone at the studio it could be expensive. I did this once and it was a great

experience, but not worth the extra dough they charged us.

Finally, I make copies of the tape so each student gets a copy of their work. If you know how to get the recording onto CD that’s the best. If not, most kids parents have a tape player in their home stereo.

And that’s Radio Theater.