Support the Hazelwood Prep Theatre Program

Hazelwood Prep is an alternative educational non-profit, with a mission to foster an inclusive educational community that inspires excellence. Our vision is to develop students to be self-directed learners who are ready for higher education and career opportunities through living history, hands-on science, and cross-discipline integration. We serve homeschooling families and anyone who needs additional educational support.

One of the ways we teach students is through theatrical production. Last year’s spring production of William Shakespeare’s As You Like It provided 15 students aged 12-17 from our community an opportunity to challenge themselves and grow, as well as providing audience members an entertaining afternoon or evening. This year we expect our student participation to increase as we added a fall production to our program. Additionally we expect to welcome around 350 members of the community into our audience between the fall and spring shows. Our main program supports basic education and literacy by focusing on teaching middle and high school world history with language arts integration. We teach four time periods chronologically over four years, following the classical model. This year we are exploring Modern History, and with that we produced a 1940s radio play October 26-27, 2023 called Tales of Twilight and the Unseen by Arthur Conan Doyle: A Radio Play. In the spring, May 9-11, 2024, we will stage Alice in Wonderland which will be led by a student director with our adult staff providing support and guidance. 

Education Through Theatre

Our reasoning for teaching classical theatre is as follows: 

Classics as a basis for literature: If students can effectively read and understand Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, Charles Dickens and Lewis Carroll, to name a few, navigating other academic texts becomes easier. This helps sharpen their thinking skills by exposing them to challenging materials. 

Advanced Vocabulary: Students who study Classical Theatre can learn to understand dialogue better and also get better at writing by seeing how authors with a lasting legacy use sentence structure, punctuation, and other literary techniques. 

Character study: The Study of Classical Theatre immerses students into the lives, worldviews, and mentalities of people they’ve never encountered, visit places they’ve never been, and comprehend historical periods they’ll never directly experience.

Timelessness:  Themes from classical plays are still relevant today. From Ancient Greek tragedians or early 20th-century playwrights, these plays are still relatable in their characters, topics, and language.   Because classical  plays are grounded in history, even when not exactly historical, we are presented with themes, settings, and situations rooted in time periods that help students immerse themselves in history. 

Alice in Wonderland will be performed in the Lawrenceville Performing Arts Center's Peach State Studio May 9-11, 2024. Students will lead show design in props, costumes, and set. For this show, technical staff at the Aurora Theatre will handle lighting and sound design with key students in assistant roles.