Jennifer Ridgway/Yard Dramas

Jennifer is listed on the Maryland State Arts Council Teaching Artist Roster!

Maryland-based nonprofit organizations, schools, and other government entities can collaborate with Jennifer to apply for MSAC Arts in Education funding!

Jennifer will travel throughout Maryland!

Please note, that if she is unable to bring her Yard Dramas wagon to you by foot, mileage and transportation costs will most likely be added as project costs.

Theater-Learning & Making Experiences: Looking for theatre-learning and theatre-making program tailored to your specific needs? Look no further! Jennifer develops a one-time or multi-session program to meet your unique needs and learning goals using storytelling, theater, puppetry, music, and dance. Programs engage individuals in the creative process, ranging from developing acting tools, such as transformation and improvisation, to devising a process drama to performing a theatrical work. Programs for schools, community centers, libraries, markets, and festivals that awaken connectivity, foster lifelong learning, shape the world, and inspire our future! Yard Dramas encourages curiosity and empathy, fostering an appreciation for our individuality while emphasizing our collective impact on the world around us.

Theater-Intregrated Experiences: Jennifer can integrate core academic standards and curricular content by developing imaginary worlds where all participants explore a particular problem, situation, or theme. Programs are age appropriate and can be inspired by an educational, fun, and historical field trip, be motivated by standards-based research, and develop through collaboration and discourse. Participants play various roles, engage in theatre artist strategies and techniques, and critically reflect on the dynamics, relationships, and conflicts that shape the situations and context of our communities, nation, and world. This is personal, immediate, and active learning where students become storytellers of their own lives and agents of change! Curriculum connections: Jennifer develops a program aligned with your science, technology, engineering, mathematics, social studies, and literacy standards! She enjoys combining her role as an Anacostia Watershed Steward and Climate Reality Leadership Corps member with art and critical literacy. Her expertise in social-emotional learning guides her.

WORKSHOP/RESIDENCY PROGRAMS
Colorful Emotions Workshop: Exploring Our Feelings in Dramatic Play (Ages 3-5)
El Monstruo de Colores by Anna Llenas inspires a multi-session social-emotional investigation that uses drama and puppets. We develop an imaginary world and explore a particular problem, situation, or theme. Your classroom becomes a rehearsal hall, learning becomes personal, immediate, and active, and students become storytellers and agents of change. Occurs in one or more 20-30 minute session.

Farm to Table Residency: Inspiration from Georgia Gilmore (Grades 1-3)
Students will explore how Georgia Gilmore’s influential role in the Montgomery bus boycott can inspire the creation of a farm-to-table restaurant today. This immersive experience involves delving into the various roles required to successfully establish a restaurant, allowing students to transform their classroom into a vibrant restaurant environment they create and curate. Throughout the process, students will be able to research family traditions and recipes, identify local and seasonal produce, and calculate meal costs for the menu. As the launch day for the restaurant approaches, students will consider how actors prepare for opening night and the role an invited audience showing can ensure they are ready for the big day. Requires five to ten 30-45 minute sessions.

Storyteller’s Puppet Box: From writing a story to devising a set and crafting puppets to sharing a performance (Grades 2-4)
This session delves into the impact of illumination on storytelling and the significance of silence and darkness. Students will harness their individual creativity to craft a 7-line story that will serve as inspiration for a crankie and shadow puppets. Through collaborative work in small groups, they will refine their stories by engaging in constructive feedback, as each group prepares for the culminating sharing day. Requires five to ten 30-45 minute sessions.

Making the World Dramatic Experience: Becoming a Changemaker and Civic Hero (Grades K-5)
Students dive into the study of transportation, communication, farming/food, and fashion by examining materials and practices of 1776. They are tasked with developing a character and recreating the classroom environment as an early community in the United States. As the program progresses, students are introduced to new historical eras and encouraged to note the technological advancements and changes in societal etiquette and cultural preferences. The sessions are designed to be improvisational, requiring students to fully immerse themselves in their chosen characters and respond to the issues and challenges of each era. They also have the opportunity to engage in conversations with influential figures relevant to their academic curriculum, such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Maggie Walker, Eleanor Roosevelt, Rosa Parks, and others. Students reflect on the qualities of these changemakers and civic heroes and consider how they can embody these traits and apply them to their community today. Requires seven to twenty 30-45 minute sessions.

In Role Drama Sessions: The United Nations for the Stages of Debate (Grades 6-9)
Students will be challenged to create and represent a fictional nation within a simulated United Nations General Assembly. This simulation will be structured like a three-act story. First, students will focus on developing their nation at the beginning, working independently or in a small group. Then, they will collectively address a climate challenge affecting each nation in the simulated world. Finally, students will work in a role to devise a resolution that addresses the issue and meets the needs of the diverse national interests involved. This program allows students to understand the interplay between culture, values, and community dynamics. Students explore how traditions, beliefs, and customs influence culture and values and how culture impacts language and behavior, as personal and collective values guide the way we communicate and act in the roles we play. Requires three to seven 45-minute sessions.

Visually Composing A Stage Workshop: Shapes, Colors, Size, and the Elements of Building Story Onstage (Grades 9-12)
Students will engage in theatre games and acting exercises and be inspired by Molly Bang’s insightful book, "Picture This: How Pictures Work." Working independently, in small groups, and as a large group, this skill-building program will hone students' observational skills, prompting them to explore the world around them to uncover hidden meanings related to relationships, status, power, and the interconnectedness between people and objects within their environments. Requires two to five 45-minute sessions.

INTERACTIVE PERFORMANCE PROGRAMS
Jennifer's interactive performance programs are stories that promote social-emotional learning in early childhood, elementary, and family audiences. The programs feature seasonal and nature-related content.
Performance titles include:

Butterfly Place, a story about Señorita Mariposa
Take an exciting adventure to explore the fascinating life of a monarch caterpillar! This interactive story will engage participants from start to finish in roles as characters who help Jennifer tell the tale and overcome her nerves. Don't miss out on the chance to experience the magic of the monarch caterpillar. Designed for spring and fall programs, as pollinators migrate in and out of their habitats.
Curriculum connections: Social-emotional learning, Gardens, Life-Cycles, Pollinators, Butterfly, Caterpillar, Seasons, Theatre

Star Light for Me and Us, a story about finding light in darkness
In this intimate performance, audience members immerse themselves in the dark, night sky, coming together to explore constellations as a community of stars. Jennifer encourages the audience to unleash their imagination as animals gracefully take their place in the sky. Shining brightly, they share their emotions and inspire self-love through a series of animal-inspired breathing and stretching exercises. This interactive narrative offers participants a sense of optimism and a chance to envision a brighter future for themselves, their families, and their immediate community. It's a fitting tale for the winter solstice period and perfectly complements studies of constellations and outer space.
Curriculum connections: Social-emotional learning, Sun & Stars, Winter Solstice, Space, Constellations.

Enhance teaching, learning, connecting, and communicating by applying professional theatre strategies! Programs are linked to the MSDE Fine Arts Theatre Standards and will be tailored to each community's needs and goals. Options include:

Growing Emotional Intelligence Through Dramatic Learning
Theatre strategies that integrate academic and SEL learning - Students experience a range of emotions as they interact with their peers, teachers, caretakers, and environment. These emotions stem from everyday experiences and affect their ability to empathize, build healthy relationships, and learn and recall core academic learning goals. This participatory workshop explores how adults can use role play and drama in the classroom to help young children recognize, label, understand, and regulate emotions. Learn how to facilitate dramatic play so participants can discover themselves, build their observation skills, engage their senses, and allow for a rehearsal of life.

Imaginary Play to Design Shared Futures
Develop a practice for devising a theatrical encounter that explores a task, decision, or place and allows participants to imagine and design the future as a rehearsal for life. This process can be applied in a school classroom or in the business world!

Elevating Play for Families: Imagine Like An Actor
Elevate your child's innate instincts to play by investigating children’s literature like an actor would a script! The dramatic process expands on the scientific investigation method and the engineering approach, develops empathy, and fosters curiosity and lifelong learning.

Theatre in the Elementary Classroom: Five Tips for Switching from Panic to Play
Let’s break down the professional theatre-making process into easy-to-use sequential steps that offer practical tips you can use immediately in the elementary classroom. Use theatre vocabulary and various dramatic strategies to create a safe, low-risk learning environment for students and teachers.
Define drama vocabulary and strategies, including transformation, tableau, and actor’s tools and skills (body, voice, imagination, cooperation, concentration, and expression).

Acting Outdoors: Nature-Based Dramatic Play
Learn how to transform an observation into a story, a dramatic story into an outdoor science experiment, and create outdoor site-specific theatre! Ignite your student’s imagination and develop their curiosity to understand and learn about the environment, nature, and science.