Alpha is part of your curriculum
Download Curriculum & Educational Overview
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
Social and Emotional Learning (SEL)
Incredible ‘real’ quality theatre as a way to create new learnings on an unconscious level.
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 our 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.
“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
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 focused 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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Connection.
It encourages students to engage in a shared connected activity celebrating fun, laughter and learning.
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!).
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).
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.
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!).
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!).
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).
