Alpha is part of your curriculum
Inspirational theatre.
The shows inspire children, teachers and the whole school community in multiple ways. You are not restricted to 'ticking' merely one box of the curriculum with an Alpha show. It's applicable and beneficial for multiple areas, to inspire creativity, growth and new understandings about the world and yourself.
Theatre, science, creativity
Our sets are large uniquely constructed pieces of theatrical cleverness. We use state of the art lighting and sound and effects. It can open a child's mind to what is possible to create with your imagination and ideas.
Music, literacy, art, performance.
We all know the benefits drama and performance can have for a student's confidence. Alpha's casts provide great role models of how to create and choose the experiences you want. And because the stories are all classic stories from myths, books and fairytales, you can incorporate them into your literacy studies too.
From the teacher notes...
"...How can we use the peak state the show created to reinforce positive ideas? What lessons, skills, and subconscious patterns can we instil right now? That could change their life forever?..." Download notes
Values Education.
An important part of all schools curriculum is a focus on values. We make it not only an easy choice to make to have one of our shows, but do values in a way that is actually effective.
No more lectures.
Students don't want to be lectured at about morals or rules. Everyone has an underlying desire to be lead by inspirational leaders and shown the way to the light. Alpha shows give students the experiences they yearn for in their soul - those that help us all remember are true natures and to experience the emotions that will lead us to our destiny.
We feel it important to reiterate the core message of each show, like we did on the theatre in education page, so that you really can get a great idea of the power of each show's message and level of impact.
Beliefs.
It's essential that children let go of limiting beliefs about themselves and the world; beliefs around scarcity or not being good enough. Instilling new positive beliefs is powerful. Beauty and the Beast
Physiology.
It's great for children to learn the power of using their bodies in effective ways. Beyond physicality, physiology includes your biochemistry and your congruency on all levels within. The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Choices.
Rather than letting your life be random, we can intend our life to follow a certain path through emotional intensity and language. Sleeping Beauty
Self-worth.
What's the point of doing anything if you don't feel like you're worthy of love or not good enough? Conscious flooding of our emotions to feel better has far reaching effects in our lives. Cinderella
Heroes.
Creating true heroes, ones that can step up and serve, is essential if this world is going to thrive. Once you realise the truth about what a real hero is, you can go out there and make it happen. Hercules
Manifestation.
It's great to have faith and feel good. But now it's time to make stuff happen - to make it real. Now your children will know the power of their thoughts and emotions and how to use them to get whatever it is they want in life. Aladdin
Oneness.
Helping children step away from associating fully with that 'little voice in your head' that tells you in order to feel good you need to be better than others. Oneness is a truth that once embraced, causes your life to feel whole, complete, and no longer a struggle. It's the final piece of the puzzle that is essential to create an outstanding, conscious human being. King Arthur
Seven shows fit together
You can see that these values work together, and whilst we overlap values across the shows, each one focusses more on one specific idea. We encourage you to book all seven shows over seven years so that no child is deprived of these great learnings.
"Unlike other company's shows that focus on one area of the curriculum, Alpha shows cover a broad range of issues relevant to children and important values that can be reinforced in the integrated curriculum classroom." - Donald PS
More FeedbackFurther in-depth thoughts.
Curriculum incorporated.
We've visited hundreds of schools since our beginning in 2003. Curriculum is a funny thing, some schools are adamant that our shows are a MUST every single year, and they eagerly book on the day for the next year. We obviously concur with these teachers and schools, and believe that valuable and quality experiences like these are essential. Alpha continues to look for ways to make the shows even more diverse in their possible use in schools.
How Alpha's specific values programs evolved.
The new shift we made in 2005 was to emphasise and highlight VALUES. We updated scripts, added extensive content to the Teacher Support Documents, and generally had an overarching philosophy of positive role models and values and using them to impact students.
Many schools have a values or virtues program, and many more have smaller programs that are focussed around certain issues like bullying etc. Now there are shows out there that are specifically a 'bullying show' or a specific topic that targets an area of the curriculum, maybe science or literacy.
The shows from other companies who approach Theatre-in-Education in a 'single curriculum requirement' way seems great initially, especially to a teacher looking to occupy their students for an hour and tick off a box in the curriculum.
The outcome
Our aim, however, is to provide such outstanding value that the event of an Alpha Show spawns something new, and something that lasts for a long time. It may not be noticeable straight away, and it may not be for every student. It starts with the screams and excitability that is created in the students during the opening sequence of each show. It lasts for long after we've left.
It takes a teacher that is able to go beyond the focus on 'today' to realise Alpha Shows are more than this basic idea of Theatre-in-Education. This is not to say you cannot just book an Alpha show very easily, have the show come in, entertain the children for 90 minutes and then continue on with normal lessons. But our outcome is always to do more. A lot more.
What is Education's responsibility?
Well, considering the diverse range of opinions and styles we have encountered over 6 years of touring, it seems there is no one answer. If I could sum up the best of the education community's efforts, and be so bold as to say that it probably should be something like - to create choices.
Choices are created by helping a student to increase awareness - obviously specific awarenesses about our world, mathematics, sciences, etc - but we can't just stop there, as this will only give a partial understanding of the world and therefore limit choices. We then extend the education to the physical, to the metaphysical, to the intangible - like sport, music and art, and in some cases, religious studies. Even then we are left with an incomplete pacakge.
So what next? There must be something that wraps everything up and provides experiential and subconscious changes in students. That moves them to a consciousness that enables higher level choices. In no way am I suggesting that Alpha Shows do this completely, but I do know this is our outcome, and as but a small part of your entire annual package of 'teachings' it is time and money well spent.
And the great thing is, you also get to tick off a few of those boxes! Music, art, movement, dance, appreciation of the arts, theatre with audience participation, bullying, role models, values, social development, creative studies, fairytales unit, classic myths (like Hercules and King Arthur), story writing, school musical tie-in...just to name a few.
Dare I say it but there have been schools we've talked to over the years that blatantly tell us that our shows do not fit in to their curriculum. This puzzles me - is your curriculum different to other schools? I understand that each school has a different focus, as a general philosophy of the school and for each year. What saddens me most is that all schools have a rich and comprehensive sports program WITHOUT QUESTION and WITHOUT EXCEPTION. Australia is a sporting nation so it seems to be valued by our society to educate our children into this sporting culture. I don't refute that, the point I would make is that:
Choices
If our responsibility is to give children choices, to empower them to make better choices, then it is our responsibility to expose them to as many experiences as possible.
Every child grows up with a thorough education in 'sport' and other areas. Does every child have a natural ability for sport? Does every child move into a career as a sportsperson? Does every child love sport? The answer to all three is 'no'. But - is a comprehensive sports program still necessary at all schools? The answer is an absolute 'YES'. Sports programs create choices - this is our criteria for whether something should be included in education - so therefore it is valuable (regardless of cultural tendencies).
Children, therefore, have the right to choose once their education is finished, whether sport should be part of their lives. Theatre should be given the same focus, as should many other elements of Australian life. Melbourne especially has not only a rich sporting culture, but also a rich theatre and arts culture. We should support this by giving children quality arts experiences that enable choices.
However, you cannot choose something you have no positive emotional experience to. Unfortunately, most theatre for children (not just in schools but everywhere) does little to create this opportunity for choice. Or, instead, it only creates the opportunity for choosing to dislike theatre - naturally, if specific theatre falls short and is just simply 'bad', then of course we should 'dislike' it. The problem arises when it is a child's FIRST experience, and maybe ONLY experience, of theatre - and they continue to believe throughout their entire lives that all theatre is as bad and boring as that first experience. They will be unlikely to 'try' theatre again, therefore they have missed out on an important part of our culture. You can see that this is getting a little more serious! I'm sure we would consider it a failure if a student who would naturally love mathematics, and perhaps even have a strong talent for it, had a bad teacher early on in Primary School and from then on always hated maths because they had a bad 'anchor' to it.
So after this discussion, we can now see the expanded criteria for experiences for children in school:
• It must create choices
• It must move them emotionally
• It must move them to a higher awareness
• It must reinforce or create neural connections in the brain that move the child to positive behaviours that lead to positive results in theirs and other people's lives
• It must play some part in preparing them to be a positive contributor in our world; to become aware of how to gain true fulfillment
Alpha's mission is to do the opposite of this - for any child (or adult that didn't get the chance as a child!) who is a natural arts lover, potential performer or potential theatre enthusiast will now have that choice. And just like with sport, we can't know which students will benefit from the theatre or sports programs so therefore all students should be exposed to both programs.
Additionally, as our criteria for an educational experience is whether something creates choices, Alpha Shows qualify as part of the curriculum, without any doubt. And this is accomplished not by focussing on a 'curriculum box', rather, by focussing on something that transcends this administrative requirement - something that focusses on a child's evolution as a human, on their development into a person who goes beyond the averageness of existence.
I can tell you with absolute certainty that Alpha events create that experience for children - it is, as we say, theatre that they can get excited about. It gives them that freedom of expression, the permission to do it. Too often children believe it is 'cool' to withhold expression, to be cynical, to be subdued, indifferent and lethargic. Unfortunately this is the side-effect of culturalisation of our children, and is mostly the example we set as adults, so that's why they mimic these behaviours (because all children, like adults, naturally have the desire to 'grow' and for most this translates to 'grow up' or 'grow older' rather than 'grow better' or 'grow in giving').
Other benefits.
There are many positive side effects from our shows also.
Peak states.
The children in the audience naturally move into what we call a 'peak state' for learning and creativity - it just makes your life easier as a teacher. We set a number of what is called 'anchors' for you to use every day to control the 'state' that you want your students in for various activities.
Growing young performers.
Young performers get to do what they always dreamt of doing and be examples to younger students of what it 'looks like' to be pursuing and realising a dream (anything we can do to encourage people to follow their dreams, to discover what gift they have to give the world, is beneficial to an audience).
Industry.
The Theatre Industry in Australia is supported because more children will develop an appreciation for theatre and arts which in turn supports these industries in the future.
Entertainment.
It's actually just great entertainment for all ages. The stories are classic fairytales, myths or literature and generally connect with our soul, to the innate archetypes within us all. This simply just moves people, and emotional experiences are always beneficial.
Contrast for choice.
Some students make choices about theatre in the other direction - they realise that even though they can see that this is 'quality theatre' they realise they hate it! Or at least, they might have fun during the show because we make funny jokes but they aren't interested in going to see theatre or participating in it. You'd think we'd try to 'fix this' but whilst I have never heard of any child coming to tell us they hated the show, I have an inkling that we help some students make this choice. I honour and celebrate this - it means they can focus instead on what does get them passionate, what does get them excited.
Community.
It brings together a community - it is our purpose on earth to 'connect' and realise the wholeness of humanity in our own gifted way. Alpha Shows go a little way towards doing this, to bring people together for a positive experience. If you haven't had one of our shows it is hard to explain - we'll talk to you after a show and see what you think then! Actually, come to 'think' of it, it isn't about 'thinking', it's not a 'thinking' activity at all - it's about the expression of the soul. If you're thinkin' about it, about the cost, about the 'relevance to the curriculum' - then you're not getting it. You're stuck in a non-imaginative place. So be open to feeling that connectedness, as your students universally and quite surprisingly scream at silly and made-up events on the stage as though they were life and death, and then have a life changing experience as a result (if they choose to!).
Connection.
It moves students away from passive and socially disconnected acitivities like video games, TV and internet related connection killers like facebook and myspace.
Laughter.
They're a lot of silly fun! Laughter is another expression of the soul, so we simply try to give people the permission to laugh! (even if it is at a poo joke!).
Creativity.
It will be easier to get real, flowing and creative writing and drawings from them, especially higher year levels (the Preps always love to draw!).
Buzz & Energy.
It will just give something common to share, as one teacher put it, 'there was a buzz at the school for weeks after and they were still talking about it a year later!' (when we returned for another show).
