Travis Intermediate - Theatre Field Trip

The field trip was for a musical called "13" which was extremely relevant to 6th graders as it was about finding your friends and group that has your place in school, who you are as a person and who you want to be. It One of my students was looking at the program they were given for the musical and asked "What does this mean, intermission?" I then explained to her how an intermission is in the middle of a play or musical, which gives both the actors and audience members a break between acts or parts of the musical. That sometimes during a musical there are things that need to happen during the intermission. Occasionally this involves a change of scenery or background, props or furniture with accessories on the stage for actors to interact with. This intermission time also gives actors time to change costumes or accessories for their characters they are portraying. Finally it also gave audience members a chance to stretch their legs after sitting for awhile, lets audience members buy merchandise related to the musical, perhaps buy snacks or get a drink, or use the restroom facilities. This intermission time is the opportunity to do any of these things without missing the important parts of the show. The main character in the play Evan Goldman, was always trying to get in with the cool kids, so they could attend his bar mitzvah. Although sometimes his helping others backfires on him in the funniest ways. He tries so hard making friends with the cool kids and forgetting about his true friends, because he wants to make sure his bar mitzvah was the best ever. During the musical onw of my students asked me "What is a bar mitzvah?" I explained to him how it is a part of the Jewish religion to have a ceremony and party celebrating a boy teen becoming a man. Similar to how a girl has a quinceañera in the Mexican culture to celebrate a girls passage to womanhood. They then asked "What is Jewish?" So I explained how it is a different type of religion that people follow. I think this was a important part of the musical that students were able to see that people who are a part of a different religion or culture are still experiencing the same growing pains, and all teens have challenges figuring out who they are and want to be. The students were also surprised to learn that all the cast members were between the ages of 11-15 and some were students at the local Conroe schools. All these students had As we left the parking lot in our school bus, the entire cast was outside and waved at our bus as we left. The students all waved goodbye and were excited for the opportunity. Overall I think this experience was very valuable to the students to see how other students face similar challenges to them.