Broadway in the classroom

Five ways to use THEATERLE in class

1. Warm-up or bell-ringer (3 to 5 minutes). Put the daily Show Guesser on the projector and let the room vote on each guess. Every clue (premiere year, composer, genre, source, and setting) is a small musical theatre history lesson.
2. Review day or unit closer. Open a trivia pack, choose Present full screen, and have teams write answers on paper. Use the printed answer key and score sheet to keep track.
3. Sub plan. Print a pack for the substitute: the question sheet for students and the answer key for the sub.
4. Research starter. Students can look up any of 151 musicals in the show guides and hundreds of roles in the character guides, each with plot, songs, and how the stage version compares with the film.
5. Spreadsheet or data project. The free Broadway musicals dataset lists every show's premiere year, composer, genre, and source material. Students can chart how many musicals were adapted from films in each decade, for example.

Trivia packs by topic

Each pack has 12 questions, answers, and host notes. Every pack page has a Present full screen button and a Print quiz and answer key button.

Running the daily game with a class

1. Open theaterle.com on the projector. Everyone gets the same mystery musical today.
2. Ask for a first guess. Any musical works; a famous one gives the most useful clues.
3. Read the row together. Green means a clue matches exactly, gold means it is close, and red means it is off. Use the year and setting clues to narrow the decade.
4. The class has eight guesses. Talk through why each next guess fits the clues.
5. When you solve it, open the show guide from the result card for a two-minute read on the answer. For a change of pace, the Character Guesser works the same way with Broadway characters.

A new puzzle appears at midnight in your time zone, so each class period on the same day sees the same answer. Practice mode gives later classes a fresh puzzle.

Content notes

The questions stay on songs, characters, and theatre history. A few packs come from shows with adult subject matter, so preview them before using them with younger students:

• Chicago: the show is about women on trial for murder.
• Moulin Rouge!: one answer describes the heroine as a courtesan.
• Rent: the show deals with HIV and addiction, and one question covers its creator's sudden death.

About ads

THEATERLE is free because the site shows ads. Printed quizzes leave the ads off, and Present full screen shows only the question on screen. On phones that do not support full screen, the presenter still fills the browser window.

Questions teachers ask

Tell us what would help

Want a pack on the show your students are performing, or a version for younger grades? Send us a note. We are two theatre fans, and we read every message.