Class Collab

Goal: Your class will create their own artistic project inspired by the themes from one of Olney Theatre Center’s productions!

Olney Theatre Center is ready to collaborate with your class on a project tailored just for your students in a year-long residency. Students will have a chance to experience professional theatre and create a piece inspired by a production in Olney Theatre Center’s 2025-26 season. Through Class Collab, students gain confidence in themselves and develop their analytical skills by engaging critically with source material to come up with a totally original artistic piece by the end of the school year.

What’s Involved: 

• Weekly/Bi-weekly sessions in which teaching artists meet with your class to guide students in analyzing the source material and the generation of their creative project.
• A visit to Olney Theatre Center to attend a student matinee performance of the production that will inspire their own project.
• Post-Show Discussion: your students will have an opportunity to talk to the artists/creative team of the production to gain insight into the creative process.
• Final projects will be presented at Olney Theatre Center to friends and family at the end of the school year. 

Class Collab looks different every year and is a great opportunity for schools to build a strong partnership with Olney Theatre Center. We are so excited to collaborate and create with your school! 

Grade Level: This program is best for theatre or performing arts classes in grades 5-12 and is specifically for Title I schools or schools with FARM rates of 50% or more free of charge.

Example of a past Class Collab

• Long Way Down: 8th grade students read the novel by Jason Reynolds that the new musical production was based on and wrote original plays inspired by the themes in the piece. Those plays were performed at Olney Theatre Center in May by the students.
• Senior Class: Students examined themes in the world premiere musical Senior Class, a retelling of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion. Students then picked a painting, fairy tale, historical event, or other source material to adapt in their own unique way, incorporating movement and music. Those pieces were performed at Olney Theatre Center for friends and family.

Possible Class Collabs for 25-26

• Little Miss Perfect: Students will explore themes of identity and will create their own original songs.
• I and You: The Musical: Students will examine poetry from Walt Whitman and other well-known American poets and then create their own performance pieces inspired by the poem.
  
   

Interested in Curricular Connection or Class Collab?

Contact Director of Education & Training Rebecca Dzida (she/her/hers) at rdzida@olneytheatre.org.