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Immersion Days
Help Them Take Part in Something Magical... Design an Immersion Day For Your Students

What happens on an Immersion Day?
Before the performance, students participate in Small Group Workshops with teaching artists on a variety of topics. Students then gain a unique backstage perspective through Build A Moment, a large group demonstration wherein actors and designers from the production perform short sections of the play.

Who are Immersion Days for?
Immersion Days are designed to serve 20-150 students in grades 7-12. Workshops and presentations are flexible, and serve both experienced theatre students and literature students with little or no theatre experience.

What do students learn from an Immersion Day that they can't learn by simply attending a production?
Students who participate in Immersion Day activities experience the performance in a deeper and more meaningful way. Throughout all workshops and presentations, Immersion Day teaching artists enrich each student's theatre experience by sharing their passion for theatre, illustrating theatre as a collaborative art, and highlighting the importance of preparation and interpretive choices.

Immersion Day Curriculum

Small Group Workshops
$120 minimum or $6 per student
  • Stage Makeup, Special Effects: Students learn to create illusions and special effects with stage makeup. (limit 18)

  • The Actor's Voice: Students learn vocal warm-ups and how actors free and strengthen their voices to create characters.

  • Unarmed Stage Combat: Through stretching and movement exercises, students become tuned to the body's natural flow and use it to learn the techniques of stage combat.

  • Improv! Improv! Improv!: Games and exercises help students to free their instincts, take risks, and be brave in the world of comedy improv. They'll have fun working in the style of Minneapolis' Brave New Workshop and TV's Whose Line Is It Anyway? while learning to listen and work together.

  • The Actor's Job: Through exercises and discussion, students gain a basic understanding of how actors confront the process of creating a character.

  • Acting - Making the Invisible Visible: Students explore the invisible world of feelings and ideas through movement, acting, and improvisation, encouraging participants to work with others in finding conflicts and seeking creative resolutions.

  • Living in the World of the Play: Through group improvisation and exercises, students practice reacting believably to their acting partner and learn how circumstances and events shape characters.

  • Beginning Rapier: Students will engage in drills to learn footwork, parries, cuts, and targeting: all essential skills for accurate and safe work with a rapier. (limit 12; cost $150)
Build A Moment
$400 for groups of 60 or less, $6 per student for groups over 60
In this large group demonstration, students witness a theatrical moment come to life as the production team introduces the collaborative process by showing a scene at different stages of production. This half-hour program combines presentation of design concepts, performance of theatrical moments by the actors, and a question and answer period.

Post-Show Symposium/Discussion
$200 minimum or $1 per student
A 30-minute discussion with four cast members following the performance, giving students the opportunity to ask questions about the play and the creative process. Designers may be added to the discussion at $50 per artist, subject to availability.
Student participating in Immersion Day programming at Park Square Theatre

"You created a magical, memory-making day. From the moment we entered the theatre we felt welcome and a part of things. On the way home the makeup kids went into McDonald's as a group...I don't think those poor girls in Hastings will ever be the same!"
–Drama Teacher, La Crosse Central High School

"I wish I wasn't graduating. I'd like to spend another Immersion Day at Park Square Theatre."
–Student, Eden Prairie High School

Planning Resources
Sample Immersion Day Schedules
Workshop Teaching Artists
Student Matinees

More Information
Mary Finnerty
Education Director
Call 651.767.8494 or send email
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