May 31, 2018 4 min read

Washington School District eighth graders got a taste of old-time radio theater, using all their core classes for two weeks to draft, write, use sound effects, rehearse and produce original radio plays and commercials for students and parents to experience.

Social studies and history teacher Erin Moore has been working with the Bricolage Production Company from Pittsburgh for the past six years to teach through project-based, interactive learning. The first five years, the programs were grant-funded through the Benedum Foundation’s Rural Arts Collaborative. However, as with most grant-funded initiatives, additional funding must be forthcoming when the seed money is gone. Because of its success, the Washington school board added the Bricolage program to the budgeted curriculum for the eighth-grade students.

The first year that the district got involved was the 75th anniversary broadcast of “War of the Worlds.” The Bricolage theater was doing “Midnight Radio” shows at their theater in Pittsburgh and had a desire to share the idea with schools. The Benedum Foundation and Jim Denova signed on as the financial support, and Jeffrey Carpenter, producing artistic director and founder, contacted former Superintendent Dr. Roberta DiLorenzo about piloting the project. Current Principal Chet Henderson was an eighth-grade history teacher with Moore then. He met with Carpenter, and, according to Moore, “It was a good idea, and the rest is history.”

“We have changed the structure significantly since that time, but the program has spread to eight schools, and five more will be doing the program over the next two years,” she said. “But Washington is the first district to approve the funding of the program as a part of our budget.”

Bricolage incorporates standards of English, language arts, history and science to create a culminating project with real professionals.

Moore said, “The students write their own scripts before the theater group comes to the school. Then, they collectively choose the top scripts to perform. Students continue to edit with a professional playwright, and on the fifth day, we cast. The second school week is rehearsals, adding the music and foley, or sound effects. In addition to the 10-to-15-minute scripts, students write commercials for products from the time period, and perform them throughout the show. The professional musician composes the music for each group’s script and commercials in one day.”

“This year, we have four scripts with 97 eighth-graders involved in the entire production, which were ready for their debut on Friday. All are Civil War-related in some way,” Moore said. “Students are allowed to pick any part of the social studies’ curriculum from throughout the year, but they tend to stick to the Civil War because they learned about it most recently and are also preparing for their field trip to Gettysburg.”

Because all core classes except math are used for the production for two weeks, students can earn 500 points spread among those subject areas.

Moore said that students “rarely miss these two weeks because of the consequences of losing so many points for core classes. The alternative for those who do miss the final production is a project and class presentation they do on their own.”

The project is extensive in order to encourage full participation, as it is hard to pull off such a large production in a ten-day period.

Seventh-graders got to see their eighth-grade friends perform at a morning production, and parents and the community were invited to attend an afternoon production.

Sam Turich, head of education for Bricolage Production Company, explained that Bricolage contracts with area professionals to work for the two weeks at Washington with the eighth graders. Seven professional actors, directors and playwrights work as teaching artists, including Gayle Pazerski, Deana Muro, Lisa Ann Goldsmith, Cassidy Adkins, Jason McCune, Parag S. Gohel and Moira Quigley. Turich said that Bricolage is expanding its school programs throughout the area in the next few years so that more students will have the benefits of learning through radio theater production.

For more information on Bricolage, visit their website at www.bricolagepgh.org/.