At Play: Teaching Teenagers Theater

Young people and improvisational theater should be a natural combination—so why do we so rarely find this combo in today's classrooms? According to Elizabeth Swados—playwright, director, composer, poet, author of children's books and of an acclaimed family memoir—improvisational theater is the perfect creative outlet for junior-high and high-school students . . . if only they can be given the tools and the guidance to make the most of this natural yet rigorous art form.

Drawing on her own ex...