Project Director:

Carol Collins, Department of Performing Arts, Clemson University

Writing and Performing Across Cultures (WAPAC) uses drama activities to help students become active learners and fluent writers. In classrooms in eighteen states, WAPAC participants are using improvisation as a tool to:

• promote lively classroom conversation;
• help students discover and appreciate their own voices
  as they interpret literature and other texts;
• stimulate many levels of writing, revising, and editing.

During the past five years, WAPAC has monitored the use of improvisation in over fifty classrooms throughout the U.S. and Puerto Rico. Improvisation dramatically transforms the classroom environment into a dynamic collaborative studio, allowing students to work together without fear of differences, heightening their writing and verbal skills, extending their analytical skills, and helping them to offer opinions and suggestions with greater insight and confidence. All improvisational activities in these classrooms are designed to motivate students to become engaged in the writing process with increased competency. Students help each other as guides and mentors in the writing and editing process.

Over sixty South Carolina teachers have worked with the project through classroom workshops, conferences, in-service training, and institutes conducted by the project director. Project workshops and conferences are conducted in collaboration with the Eugene O'neill Theater Center, the South Carolina Arts Commission, and the Brooks Center for the Performing Arts.

Classroom and staff development workshops focus on Learning Skills Across the Curriculum, Creative Writing Through Improvisation, The Ensemble Process, and Interpreting Literature Through Drama.

To illustrate the discovery involved in staging students' own works, the Celebration! Ensemble performs stories, poems and scripts written by K-12 students throughout the U.S. WAPAC invites students to submit their work to our selection committee for performance consideration.

For more information contact:

Carol Collins
Brooks Center for the Performing Arts
P.O. Box 341505
Clemson, SC 29634-1505

Telephone: (864) 656-6587
Fax:    (864) 656-1013
E-mail: collinc@clemson.edu

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