How to choose your students’ roles in school play dramas

If you’re in charge of staging the school play, you might be wondering how to tackle the task of casting it. Find out our top tips for teachers on how to choose the right roles for your students.

It can be incredibly rewarding to stage a school play where you get the chance to boost school morale, build your students’ confidence, and integrate with the community. But, it can be daunting to try and choose the school play roles for your students. You want to make sure everyone has an equal opportunity to participate but also ensure that they all enjoy the play and don’t feel pressured to do aspects they don’t want to.

Tips for teachers casting school plays at a glance

The key to a fair distribution of roles in your class is knowing your students and letting them express their preferences where possible. Ultimately, the choice is yours but you can let your students come forward to make the process a two-way street.

Here are our tips for the best ways of selecting students for roles in the school play.

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1. Let your students pick a category first

A great way to gauge what type of role your students would like to have in the school play is to ask them to choose a category. For example, they could pick either actor, narration, non-speaking or music and from this, you can see what they’re comfortable with and go from there. Those who have specified non-speaking are evidently not going to be comfortable with a leading role.

You can go with more vague categories if you want to push your students to be more open to the experience, such as using a traffic light method. Students can choose ‘red’ if they’re adamant they don’t want a key role, ‘amber’ if they don’t mind what they do within the play, or ‘green’ if they’re keen to take on a more inclusive role wherein they may be a lead role or singing for example.

2. Host an audition process

Whilst a school play isn’t a West End production, holding auditions can be a useful tactic. Sometimes children can seem confident and enthusiastic, but when it comes to it, they might freeze in front of an audience. It’s useful to realise this early on to save the student from potential anxiety and ensure the running of the play.

Auditions also provide an opportunity for those students who you’ve pegged as more reserved in the classroom, to surprise you by auditioning and coming out of their shell. Just make sure that you don’t get caught up in the audition process and choose students with a specific ‘look’ for a part - your Sandy from Grease doesn’t need to have traditional blonde hair!

3. Trust yourself

Likely the most traditional of options is just choosing the play parts based on your own knowledge, both as their class teacher and as an experienced teacher in itself. Ultimately you’re going to best know your student’s capabilities and who will be reliable for the key parts.

You may feel assured in your position as their teacher to simply sit down with your class list and the character list side by side and choose who’s who. You could use this as chance to give a helpful nudge to a student you’ve noticed who rarely gets the opportunity to showcase their skills, or take a leap of faith by giving an important role to a student with behavioural issues which in the long run could be a huge help to how they are in your class.

What you need to remember about choosing your students’ roles in the school play

While there is no sure fail-safe option for choosing the play roles for your students, these ideas can help you find the best way of allocating the parts in your class. Don’t let the potential stress of casting bring down your excitement over staging the school play. Make the process fun and involve your students if you can, but most important of all, trust your skills as a professional.

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