Sophie Rich
Sophie Rich

Educator

Drama has the power to captivate, free, enliven, and transform, which is why I believe that drama holds a key to teaching and learning.

 
 
Sophie Rich Educator

I want to re-write educational spaces to reflect the joy, curiosity, engagement, depth, and, above all, empathy that I believe theatre uniquely has the power to evoke. My educational ethos is grounded in my conviction that theatre is its own way of knowing, its own way of learning, a way quite opposite to our standard image of school. I want to harness theatre for the learning of theatre, theatre for the deeper learning that theatre can foster, and theatre for the connections that theatre can inspire. I identify my core values as an educator as play, creativity, collaboration, and empathy, values that theatre, and specifically theatre education, embodies and reinforces.

As an educator, I have experience teaching students from Pre-K through seniors in high school in a wide range of settings, whether serving as a faculty member or a visiting teaching artist, teaching during the school day, after school, or in local community-based theatre programs. I design all of my own curricula and am well-versed in creative drama pedagogy, arts integration, and devising. I love to teach… story dramatization, image theatre, character creation, improvisation, creative movement, process drama, scene study, text analysis, Shakespeare, Commedia dell’Arte, musical theatre, directing, ensemble acting, playmaking, creative adaptation, music and movement, and more! From Mother Goose to fractured fairy tales to the Greek chorus and everything in between, I have extensive experience designing and teaching theatre curricula to students of all ages.

 

Where can my work be found? Some examples include:

 
 
Sophie Rich Educator

  • I serve as the Performing Arts Specialist at the Atrium School (Pre-K through 8), where I have built their drama program from the ground up. The comprehensive, creative drama-based program offers curricular, interdisciplinary, and extracurricular opportunities ranging from storybook theatre to devising around social justice themes to after school productions to the popular 8th grade Macbeth unit.

  • I am the Education Director of Boston Theater Company, where I designed, launched, and continue to oversee the educational touring Shakespeare program including workshops, professional touring productions, and a Teen Touring Troupe. Our creative approach to teaching Shakespeare from the inside-out through the lens of empathy and embodiment has seen success in a diverse array of middle and high schools from Western Massachusetts to Cape Cod and working with visiting school groups from around the world including Australia and Norway, reaching hundreds of students each year.

 

 Testimonials for Boston Theater Company:

 
“Working with BTC is an exhilarating experience. Sophie and Joey guided my students to a new understanding of Hamlet through improvisation and performance, highly recommended.”
— Tony Cape, The Hartsbrook School
 
Sophie Rich Educator
“The program was excellent professional development for our English Department because we learned more about how to effectively teach drama. Most important, the talented presenters of the Boston Theater Company deepened our students’ understanding of The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet in a way that was rich and lasting. Sophie and her team challenged our students to make inferences about the characters’ motivations in a critical scene. The team also used a variety of active learning strategies (large group discussions, small group discussions, perspective taking, kinesthetic learning [tableaus], and readers’ theater) to help our students build multiple pathways to their long term memories. Our students learned valuable lessons about the play, and they had fun. Thank you, Boston Theater Company!”
— Dr. Philip Struzziero, Hingham High School
 
“The girls were thrilled with their production of mini-scenes for Act I sc 1 that when put together brought the language and context to life. In fact, the class was so enthusiastic that they were ready to present their work in front of an all-school meeting the next day! The class presented clear challenges to the instructors: almost one-third of the class was made up of students for whom English is a second language… the workshop brought their understanding and skills to a very much higher level. Sophie Rich in particular was exceptionally impressive in demonstrating her skill in working with a large group. She quickly learned every girl’s name and was careful to gauge the comfort level of the shyer students in the warm-ups and games. She contextualized the activities as they related to learning to perform and answered questions thoroughly and sensitively. As a forty-year veteran theater teacher myself, I feel I can recognize good educational work when I see it. [Boston Theater Company] used both tested and innovative techniques to engage the students throughout the class.”
— Lucinda Kidder, Stoneleigh-Burnham School
 
 
“Your personalized visit shifts student awareness and elevates their buy-in. Your work legitimizes Shakespeare beyond a high school course thing.”
— Paul Scavotto, Scituate High School
Sophie Rich Educator
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