When HartBeat met with a group of community members in the Fall of 2010, one issue seemed to come to the forefront for the parents present: their children were experiencing bullying in school and they felt like they didn’t have a way to address it.

So in the Spring of 2011, HartBeat piloted a new education program at Noah Webster Microsociety Magnet School. Named “Startin’ Drama,” it was developed around the phenomenon we came across in the research:

“When I first started interviewing teens about bullying they’d say, ‘There’s no bullying problem here’… We were speaking two different languages. They’d be talking about people ‘startin’ drama.’ ” – Danah Boyd, Youth and Social Media Scholar

Startin’ Drama is a bullying prevention program that teaches empathy, engagement and empowerment. For 6th- 12th Graders.

Combining interactive theater with evidenced based assessment tools, Startin’ Drama moves beyond typical bullying prevention programs by creating and performing scenes that come from participants’ specific experiences.  Through any of our three tiered programs, HartBeat will find out what topics are important to your youth (such as rumors, cyber bullying, ostracizing one another etc.), and use original theater as an entertaining forum to address them.

Tier 1:  60-Minute Assembly/Workshop
HartBeat comes to your school/organization prior to the workshop and conducts a pre-program assessment with the students.  Based on the assessment results, HartBeat brings three original scenes to perform.  After each scene, HartBeat leads the youth in interactive conflict resolution activities based on Augusto Boal’s Theater of the Oppressed.  The program ends with a participant assessment that not only measures progress in bullying prevention skills, but also serves as a blueprint for future steps your school/organization can take to build on the empathy, engagement and empowerment that Startin’ Drama creates.

Tier 2:   3-5 Day Intensive
This version of Startin’ Drama puts the playwriting and performing into the participants’ hands.  Once the pre-program assessment has been completed, HartBeat Master Teachers spend several days teaching  the youth to analyze the data and then create scenes based on the most common issues reported. The residency culminates with the same interactive performance and post program assessment as described in Tier 1 except that the students themselves perform their original scenes.

Tier 3:   4-Week After School Program
The final tier of Startin’ Drama turns the program into a month long after school curriculum.  Participants meet twice a week for four weeks as HartBeat Master Teachers guide them through the process of administering the assessments, evaluating the data, writing and rehearsing the scenes and performing the interactive assembly/workshop for their school or community.

Ask us how specific Social Studies and Language Arts GLEs and State Standards can be applied to each tier of Startin’ Drama!

HartBeat will tailor program costs to your needs and budget.

For more information or to bring Startin’ Drama to your school/organization contact Julia Rosenblatt at 86-548-9144 ext. 113 or email julia.rosenblatt@hartbeatensemble.org