Theater Merit Badge

Requirements for the Theater merit badge:

1. See or read three full-length plays.* Write a review of each. Discuss with your counselor the plot or story. If you chose to watch the plays, comment on the acting and the staging.
2. Write a one-act play that will take at least eight minutes to perform. The play must have a main character, conflict, and a climax.
3. Discuss with your counselor the safety precautions that should be practiced when working in a theater to protect the cast and crew.
   Then do THREE of the following:
   1. Act a major part in a full-length play; or act a part in three one-act plays.
   2. Direct a play. Cast, rehearse, and stage it. The play must be at least 10 minutes long.
   3. Design the set for a play or a theatrical production. Make a model of it.
   4. Design the costumes for five characters in a theatrical production set in a historical time.
   5. Show skill in hair and makeup design. Make up yourself or a friend as an old man, a historical figure, a clown, an extraterrestrial, or a monster as directed.
   6. With your counselor's approval, help with the building and painting of the scenery for a theatrical production.
   7. With your counselor's approval, design the lighting for a play; or help install, focus, color, program, and operate the lighting for a theatrical production.
   8. With your counselor's approval, help install, focus, equalize, program, and operate the sound for a theatrical production.
   9. Serve as the stage manager for a theatrical production. Document all cues and stage setups in your calling script.
4. Mime or pantomime any ONE of the following chosen by your counselor.
   1. You have come into a large room. It is full of pictures, furniture, other things of interest.
   2. As you are getting on a bus, your books fall into a puddle. By the time you pick them up, the bus has driven off.
   3. You have failed a school test. You are talking with your teacher who does not buy your story.
   4. You are at a camp with a new Scout. You try to help them pass a cooking test. The Scout learns very slowly.
   5. You are at a banquet. The meat is good. You don't like the vegetable. The dessert is ice cream.
5. Explain the following: proscenium arch, central or arena staging, center stage, stage right, stage left, downstage, upstage, stage crew, flies, portal, cyclorama, stage brace, spotlight, floodlight, lighting control board, sound mixing desk.