San Francisco’s WORD FOR WORD Performing Arts Company performs short works of fiction in their entirety, preserving the author’s voice and honoring their intent with exciting visuals and inventive staging. In addition to a full professional company working out of the innovative Z Space, they run an arts education program known as YOUTH ARTS, employing the Word for Word style of in-depth, literature-from-the-inside-out workshops in Bay Area schools.

Connexionarts provided writing and editorial services in the development of Word for Word in the Classroom, a guide intended to support classroom workshops. We were privileged to spend time with members of the WFW Performing Arts Company working with youth so that we were accurately able to describe their unique process of working with text, literally word by word.

In addition to describing theatre strategies and line division strategies, the guide uses an excerpt from THE HOUSE ON MANGO STREET, Darius and the Clouds by Sandra Cisneros, to teach to the Word for Word approach, and by so doing, extends and embeds the learning from the workshop experiences.