Play Creation
Theater & Visual Arts Class for Ages 8-12
Play Creation
Theater & Visual Arts Class for Ages 8-12
Fall Session: Thursdays, 4:30pm-6:00pm
September 25 - November 13, 2025
Class Description
This class combines visual arts and performing arts inviting students to explore multiple steps of creating a play. Each class begins with a warm-up and movement-based game. Students work together using improvisation, physical acting, and design elements to bring their original characters to life. Hands-on projects include creating props, crafting costume pieces, tie-dye, painting, and mask-making. The fall session culminates with a performance for friends and family on Thursday, November 13 at 5:30pm.
Learning Objectives
Skills for movement, improvisation, teamwork, and communication
Engage in multiple steps of creating a play
Learn elements of design by crafting props, costumes, and set pieces
Apply the actor’s tools of voice, body, and imagination to narrative storytelling and creating original characters
Articulate the ways that visual and performing arts support one another
Price and Location
Spring Session: $285 (7 Classes)
Location: Rhode Island School for the Deaf
Address: 1 Corliss Park, Providence, RI, 02908
Instructors
Play Creation includes visual arts, prop-making, costume design, improvisation, movement, and narrative storytelling. This class is instructed by Filipa Estrela and Matthew Bretschneider.
Filipa Estrela (any pronouns) is a crafter, cartoonist, clown, costumer, and educator; sometimes all at the same time. They are an artist working in the Providence, Rhode Island area and are a member of the Queer Archive Work and Binch Press studio. Filipa’s creative practice is all about play, experimentation, blending the everyday with a dose of myth, magic and wonder. In their works they often draw inspiration from their identity and heritage as a queer, gender-fluid, Cape-Verdean/ Chinese/ Portuguese mixed person of color, while focusing on soft moments that reflect the complex relationships people experience within themselves and with others. Most of all, Filpa wants to tell stories that are heartwarming, encourage human connection, and inspire others to embrace their own creative selves.
Matthew Bretschneider (he/him) is Artistic Director of Studio Playground and an Adjunct Professor at Boston University. He has performed with the Huntington Theatre Company, The Flea Theater, Theatre Row, The New Ohio, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Kitchen Theatre Company, and Boston Playwrights’ Theatre. Television Credits include Law & Order: SVU and The Path. Matthew received his MSW from Rhode Island College School of Social Work and received a BFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Matthew has taught physical theater for Commonwealth Shakespeare Company, Trinity Repertory Company, Walnut Hill School for the Arts, Rhode Island College, University of Rhode Island, and Suffolk University.
Safey Guidelines - Youth Classes
Please note this policy is subject to change. Here is our protocol as of 5/08/25:
Wearing a mask is optional for staff and students. Class size is limited. Staff keep daily attendance records for contact tracing, provide hand sanitizer, and encourage hand hygiene.
Any student who has a fever or who is experiencing symptoms of COVID-19 is advised not attend class.