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First Unitarian Church, Alton
The Chalice Theater curriculum was developed and field-tested in 2011 by First Unitarian Church, Alton, Illinois. The First Unitarian Church of Alton is a welcoming and inclusive faith community of 130 members. All proceeds from the sale of Chalice Theater are donated to the First Unitarian Church’s Religious Education program budget.
Chalice Theater Description
Chalice Theater is an active program of instructive stories through drama that explores what fable, folklore, legend, and sacred stories have to say to us about peacemaking, self-esteem, thankfulness, name-calling, determination, truth, recklessness, and generosity. The curriculum was designed for multi-age groups of first through sixth graders. It contains eight, 60-minute lessons, which are best suited to class sizes around 20 children.
Chalice Theater employs the popular Reader’s Theater format used in many elementary schools across the country. There is no memorization — scripts are held; there are no costumes — maybe just a partial or suggestive one; there are no sets; no rehearsals. Each session contains a short lesson about theater craft and then presents a story that illustrates what it is like as actors to “put ourselves in someone else’s shoes.” At the end of each drama, participants are given an opportunity to reflect on what the story teaches us about ourselves, our relationships, and our UU principles.
Reader's Theater
Chalice Theater relies in part on the professional work of Aaron Shepard from whom we have obtained written permission to include his stories in this curriculum. All of Shepard’s story material presented herein may be freely copied and shared for any noncommercial purpose as long as you give appropriate credit to source material. Aaron Shepard’s stories may not be posted on the open Internet without the author’s permission.
Chalice Theater in the UU Religious Education Setting
This curriculum is foremost about character building and values and secondarily about Unitarian Universalist Principles — to the extent that the stories’ themes relate to those Principles. From the fifty or so scripts available through Aaron Shepard, eight were chosen from sacred text, myth, fable, and folktale that contain special worth to the “growing soul.” Stories come from diverse origins — nationally and culturally, and have both female and male protagonists. Throughout, the curriculum tries to balance entertainment with epiphany.
Using this Curriculum
If there is a significant constraint to using this curriculum, it is this: participants must be readers and old enough to take direction. After that, there are few requirements and no limits to incorporating your own ideas, discussion questions, and sense of humor. More important than acquiring theater skills is exploring right-relationship with one another and the collateral course benefits of gaining self-confidence, taking direction, working as part of a team toward a common goal, and the discussion after performance.
You do not have to have a theater background to excel in presenting this curriculum. Cultures throughout time have trained us to pay attention to stories, and children are natural pretenders. So, run some copies of the stories, clear a space, set out a few stools, assign some parts, and go with the flow until THE END. You won’t need anything much in the way of equipment to do Chalice Theater: some stools or chairs, a poster of the UU principals, and a bit of creative magic. And ACTION!
Purchasing this Curriculum
Purchase price is $40. Sales of this curriculum are a fund-raising activity for the benefit of First Unitarian’s Religion Education program budget. You may pay with credit card or PayPal account (but you don’t have to have a PayPal account to make a purchase). After PayPal processes your order, you should receive from our DRE an email with a Microsoft Word document (85 pages) attachment containing the curriculum and its scripts. If this process somehow misfires, contact the DRE below.
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