By Jeff Pazdalski | Development Director
Thank you for your generous support of Oregon Children’s Theatre!
OCT closed our 2013-14 season with The Giver, Fancy Nancy, and Zombie in Love - a world premiere musical from an original script and score we commissioned. In reviewing Zombie in Love Portland Stage Reviews (by Becky Burke, 3/1/14) wrote, “I envision middle school and high school drama departments all over the country performing this musical. Everyone can relate to not fitting in, feeling like the awkward teen – OCT captured that exact feeling, and that time, and condensed it into a musical.”
Our productions were consistently recognized for their quality. OCT was honored with six Drammy Awards (Portland’s version of the Tony Awards), making OCT the second most honored organization in Portland’s 2013-14 theater season regardless of the age of the audience. The Giver earned Drammy Awards for Prop Design and Projection Design; and Zombie in Love received awards for Young Performer, Director of a Musical, Original Script, and Original Score. OCT also received three Portland Area Musical Theatre Awards: Zombie in Love and Fancy Nancy were both recognized for Young Performer, and Zombie in Love was honored as Best Original Musical.
21,000 students attended school field trip performances, and 3,900 students from economically disadvantaged schools received ticket scholarships to ensure access that would not otherwise be possible. OCT offered teachers 2 professional development workshops and 3 free preview performances that allowed them to see the play before their field trip to help with the integration of the play into their classroom plans. More than 200 teachers participated in these activities.
One of OCT’s goals is to ensure that our plays also advance curriculum-linked classroom learning for our school audiences. In addition to the professional development workshops and previews, OCT also provided resource guides with ready-to-use lesson plans that supported required curriculum across 6 subject areas and 9 grade levels (K-8). Our comprehensive surveys with teachers showed that the resource guides were valued: 96% would recommend them to their peers as a good resource, 87% said the suggested lesson plans were directly relevant to their curriculum, and 60% used the suggested lesson plans with their students either before or after their field trip. Feedback received from teachers helps demonstrate the impact of our performances and services:
“Seeing new or different presentations of ideas can help students to synthesize or express their own ideas. I think it inspires students, especially those who aren’t connecting in the classroom.”
“(The play) reinforced our experience with the book. Kids were 100% engaged and everyone, even my low readers, could participate with classroom discussions when we returned to class.”
“It is difficult to create something that fits what each school needs, but your resource guide fits the bill.”
OCT’s teacher resource guides are available for download and review at http://www.octc.org/schoolservices/resourceguides.
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
