Take a field trip to Lyric Stage for Back Stage, an education program that provides an introduction to the jobs and potential back stage career paths in the performing arts such as lighting, sound, props, and costuming.

Sessions will be held on-site at Lyric Stage and last approximately 90 minutes:

• The first half of the session will provide an introduction to the space and the technical elements used to create a performance.  Students will meet professional designers who will introduce the key processes and skills used in their work.
• In the second half, students will watch a performance of a play that incorporates the demonstrated design elements, giving students a behind-the-scenes look at how the design choices were made and how they contribute to the storytelling onstage.

Dates

All performances will begin at 10am

High School

• December 5, 6, 7
• December 12, 13, 14

Middle School

• January 30, 31, February 1

To sign up or learn more, please email alex_smith@lyricstage.com

All participating schools will receive a pre-show education guide that includes an excerpt from the play the group will see performed and suggested activities that support students in beginning the process of thinking like designers.

Boston Public Schools will have the option to add on a post-show visit from the show’s director and one member of the professional design team.  Content for the visit will be customized to the group and could include additional Q&A on careers and/or design process, a brief hands-on activity, and/or providing feedback on student work such as the activities from the pre-show materials.  Post-show visits will be scheduled on an as-requested basis as designer availability permits.

To sign up or learn more, contact alex_smith@lyricstage.com

In Lyric Back Stage, students will:

• Learn basic fundamentals of how various aspects of design are used in the theatre.
• Gain familiarity with the purpose of various areas of theatrical design and how technical theatre communicates, compliments, and frames a theatrical production.
• Understand the designer’s role and the elements and principles which designers use to establish meaning in the mind of the audience.

High School: Made You Look by David Valdes

If you had the opportunity to gain full access to someone else’s social media account, to see everything they’d ever written or searched, would you take it?  No one at Jones High School gives much thought to what they say and do on the SLAB app – that is, until someone hacks the app and grants an unfiltered look into everyone’s hidden digital lives.  In Made You Look, four high school students grapple with the ethical and interpersonal implications of their curiosity.

Middle School: Party Bots by Ginger Lazarus

If space aliens came to Earth, what might they want?  How would their arrival change humanity, for better or worse?  Bash and Ellery unleash the answers when they discover and open a mysterious canister in a field, and the resulting party is unlike anything they ever could have imagined.  Sci-fi and robots collide with Chex Mix and the ultimate dance-off in this delightful comedy by Ginger Lazarus.

Lyric Stage is Boston’s longest-serving resident theatre company. Lyric’s season of productions features the talents of local directors, actors, designers, and production staff, and through its commitment to these artists’ growth, the theatre plays a vital role in the Boston theatre community. Similarly, Lyric’s Community Programs celebrate the many intersecting communities that call Greater Boston home via the essential communal practice of theatrical storytelling.

Back Stage is featured on WBZ/CBS Boston!

Sponsors

Lyric Back Stage is made possible by the generous support of our sponsor, First Republic Bank