IDEAS' mission is to provide direct interactive drama activities to young people with disabilities and other disadvantages, using drama as a teaching and learning tool, for personal development, social awareness and equal educational access to dramatic arts.
Interactive Drama for Education and Awareness in the Schools (IDEAS) provides theatrical teaching artists to schools and afterschool programs serving youth with disabilities and other disadvantages. IDEAS programs offer drama as part of a well-rounded education for populations routinely excluded from drama activities, using drama as a teaching and learning tool. These populations include those with physical, sensory or cognitive disabilities as well as disadvantages such as social, economic or geographic. IDEAS offers Sociodrama and Creative Drama for ages 5-21 as well as workshops for parents and professionals. Programs have been implemented at schools and programs in New York City and the surrounding suburbs.
With improvisation, group theater games, ensemble-building and new vocabulary IDEAS improves capacity for literacy and communication skills. Interactive drama impacts lives by showing youth options of behavior through character creation and relationships between those characters. With props and costumes IDEAS helps awaken imagination and guide students to feel what it might be like in someone else's shoes, creating empathy that can transfer to real life. IDEAS provides a direct experience where youth are encouraged to "act out" creatively, something they are often reprimanded for doing.
- Location: Based in Brooklyn, NY and serving all of NYC
- Visit the website: IDEASDrama.org