About SMHS Drama
San Mateo High School is the home of one of the Bay Area’s finest and most comprehensive high school drama programs. Offering courses in Drama, Musical Theatre and Cinema and Society, students are exposed to the dramatic arts in multiple forms and formats. Coursework provides students with hands-on academic opportunities in acting, directing, design and choreography (often in conjunction with San Mateo High’s highly acclaimed dance and music departments).
In addition to its high-level classroom work, San Mateo High School produces 3 exceptional quality shows each year in the newly renovated state-of-the-art on-campus performing arts center. Boasting multiple awards from both San Jose Stage Company’s Top Honors and American Musical Theatre of San Jose’s Honors, San Mateo High School has developed a reputation for excellence in drama education and performance. By providing a robust drama curriculum, San Mateo High School is developing students’ skills in numerous areas emphasized by California’s recently-implemented Common Core curriculum, including real-world problem-solving, collaborative learning and communication.
Most importantly, San Mateo High School’s drama program provides students the opportunity to develop a time-honored craft: telling stories, using a toolkit comprised of their voices, bodies and imaginations, while testing their maturing senses of reasoning and emotion. And, by making high-quality productions accessible to the greater San Mateo-Foster City-Burlingame community, San Mateo High’s drama students are educating the next generation of audience members.
2016 – 2017 Board of Directors
Brad Friedman (Artistic Director)
Dina La Bove (Treasurer)
Bill Dailey (Corresponding Secretary)
Sue Dooley (Parliamentarian)
Lynn Madden (Administrative Assistant)
Josephine Reyes (President)
Isabelle Bushman (Vice President)
Martha McKenna (Recording Secretary)
Wendy Sims (Historian)
Jeanne DeFelice (Community Outreach)
Come to our monthly booster meeting the second Thursday of the month in the Multipurpose Room (old Flex Theater) at 7:30 PM.
Class Syllabus
Drama One
The purpose of Drama One is to give you a chance to become better performers, theatre scholars and critics. Advanced Drama students have the opportunity to deepen their acting skills, as well as take a leadership role as improvisation team leaders and scene directors. Our curriculum is aligned to the state and district standards for theatre in which you will be expected to demonstrate proficiency in order to pass the class.
Film Studies
The purpose of this class is to make you talk and think and write about art – in this case, one particular art form that we call film – and how it reflects the society in which we live. I never want you to stop enjoying watching movies; however, I hope that after this year will watch them more critically and with a better understanding of how form and content are interrelated.
Musical Theater
The purpose of Musical Theatre is to teach the history and structure of this most American form of drama. This is done through a minimum of lecture, a bit of research, and primarily through your performance of a variety of projects. For those of you who are new to this, the materials you will need are: water to drink, comfortable clothes so that you can sing and move as needed, a small recorder (if possible) to record songs you will need to sing, and a pencil to mark your materials.
Sponsors
