In multiple classrooms each year, hundreds of students participate in our in-class theatre workshops during their school day.

VAST helps reduce barriers to classroom participation with universal, non-verbal & visual stories. This growing program adapts our successful after-school curriculum to a residency of in-class workshops where US teaching artists work alongside the classroom teacher to help groups of students collaborate to create and perform short theatre pieces through improvisation, rewriting, editing, and rehearsing.

“The thing that I love most about this program — yes they develop public speaking skills, yes they have more confidence — is that it gives an outlet for children with challenging behavior. [One of the more challenging students] would just dive into the performances, and it helped me [as her teacher] create a different relationship with her, so on the days when we didn’t have VAST I could go back to that connection with her. It has allowed her to be able to stay in class and not be sent out and to participate more fully in her education with me.”