Email: julie_k_wood@hotmail.com
I had an amazing experience at Spectaculu, which is an after-school program that trains low-income 17-21 year olds for the “behind the scenes” jobs in the theater. (Check out their site at spectaculu.org.br. There’s an English version). Most of the students are in high school or college, and many are studying to do things other than work in the theater, but all of them really enjoy the classes and activities at Spectaculu. They are wonderful to work with. The school is located near the bus station – not a nice neighborhood, but not a favela. It’s a place that’s easy for the students to access.
I expected to teach English, but when I arrived at Spectaculu and spoke with the two directors about my career in advertising, we decided I would teach an advertising workshop and would produce a commercial for the school to put on their blog. I gave a week-long workshop to nine students. It ran Monday – Friday for 3 hours each afternoon. I arrived each day by 12:30 or 1 to have lunch with the students and teachers, and the workshop ran from 2pm – 5pm.
The 5-day workshop was structured as follows: Monday I gave a presentation - an introduction to the advertising process with some examples from my ad agency in New York. Tuesday we wrote our creative brief & did creative development. We presented our scripts to our “clients” (the two directors) on Tuesday. We finalized our shooting script on Wednesday. We shot on Thursday – this with the help of everyone at the school. Students acted in the video – both those in my workshop and those in other classes. The makeup students did the makeup for all of our actors. A former student was our camera man. One of the school directors was our Director. We edited with another former student on the school’s equipment on Friday. One of the school staff created a soundtrack on a Mac, and we presented the finished video to all the students on Friday afternoon.
Students gave very positive feedback. They enjoyed learning about advertising and producing something real. For the students who acted in the video, it was their first opportunity to act on film – as opposed to on the stage.
One note is that I used to live in São Paulo and worked in an advertising agency there for 3 years, so I was able to give the workshop in Portuguese. That being said, many of the students study English and would have been able to follow a workshop in English. In that case, I think that the school’s directors would have selected students to participate based on their English language ability.
The directors at Spectaculu are very helpful and easy to work with – and they’ll help you create a way contribute to the students. If you have experience with any of the following you could create a workshop specific to your area of expertise: acting, photography, video, hair styling, makeup, dance, set design or carpentry. They are also open to workshops on topics not directly linked to the theater – like advertising in my case.
Teaching English, of course, is also a great option. It would be interesting for the students to learn the vocabulary associated with the theater – and the topics they are studying at Spectaculu.
