This page supports teachers and facilitators using The Art of Accessible Sound toolkit with students of varied abilities and learning styles.
Teacher Hub
Arizona Theatre Matters Education
Study Guides
Explore the histories, people, ideas, artistic choices, and questions surrounding fourteen Arizona Theatre Matters productions.
The performance is a beginning.
ATM Study Guides extend the life of the work through production context, historical inquiry, questions for reflection and conversation, and pathways for continued exploration. They are free and available online for educators, students, audiences, community groups, and curious people.
Explore the Guides
Newest to oldest
Mackers Study Guide
Even Unto Death Study Guide
Lear — a Solo Adaptation Study Guide
Ghosts of the Gilded Stage Study Guide
Great Divide Study Guide
The Ferryman’s Toll
Unyielding Voices Study Guide
Pineapple and Other Options Study Guide
The Tempest Study Guide
When Churchyards Yawn Study Guide
Bambino Mio — Bright Little Flame Study Guide
The Jewish Question Study Guide
Under Milk Wood Study Guide
Heretic — The Mary Dyer Story Study Guide
The library keeps growing.
New Study Guides are created alongside the work and remain freely
available online.
Study Guides & Toolkits
Two ways to go further
Arizona Theatre Matters creates both Study Guides and Toolkits for our work. They are related, but they are not interchangeable.
A Study Guide helps you explore the work.
A Toolkit helps you do something with what you discover.
We create both because understanding and action are different things, and each deserves its own space.
What is a Study Guide?
A Study Guide is an invitation to look more closely.
It provides context for a play, performance, or project: the history behind it, the ideas it raises, the people and events connected to it, and questions that can open further inquiry.
A Study Guide might include:
- Historical and cultural context
- Background on the work and its creation
- Themes and ideas worth exploring
- Primary-source materials and further reading
- Questions for reflection and discussion
- Connections to other disciplines, events, or works
You do not need to be a student or teacher to use one. Our Study Guides are for anyone who wants to spend more time with the questions a work raises.
They don’t tell you what the work means.
They give you more with which to wonder about it.
What is a Toolkit?
A Toolkit begins in a different place.
Instead of asking, “What can I understand?” it asks, “What can I do?”
Toolkits contain practical resources that can be adapted and used by artists, educators, organizations, facilitators, communities, and individuals. Depending on the project, a Toolkit might include:
- Exercises and activities
- Discussion and facilitation methods
- Planning resources
- Templates and worksheets
- Practices that can be adapted for different settings
- Resources for making artistic and community work more accessible
- Ideas for experimentation and further creation
A Toolkit is not a set of commandments. It is exactly what its name suggests: a collection of tools.
Take what is useful. Adapt it. Combine it with something else. Try it differently. Discover what happens.
Why do we need both?
Because learning about something and knowing what to do with it are not the same thing.
A Study Guide can deepen your encounter with a work. It can complicate an assumption, uncover a history, introduce another perspective, or leave you with a better question than the one you started with.
A Toolkit carries that inquiry into practice.
The Study Guide says: Look again.
The Toolkit says: Now try something.
One creates context. The other creates possibility.
Together, they allow the work to continue beyond the performance, beyond the classroom, and beyond Arizona Theatre Matters.
They are free. Use them.
Our Study Guides and Toolkits are created as public resources and are available free of charge.
Read them alone. Bring them into a classroom. Use them in rehearsal. Share them with a group. Build a conversation around them. Borrow an exercise. Question an assumption. Adapt a tool. Follow a source somewhere we didn’t anticipate.
The performance may end.
The inquiry doesn’t have to.
How to Use This Toolkit
- Use the activities as written, or adapt them for your students.
- Allow students to participate through sound, movement, gesture, drawing, or stillness.
- Participation and sharing are always optional.
- Noticing and observing are valid forms of engagement.
Toolkit: Talking About the Video
This optional study guide supports teachers and facilitators in talking with students about the introductory video for The Art of Accessible Sound. The questions are designed for Grade 2 and inclusive classrooms. Students may respond by pointing, signing, drawing, gesturing, using AAC, or simply noticing. There are no right answers.Beginning of the Video
- Who welcomes us at the beginning of the video?
- What question does the video ask about theater?
- What are some kinds of theater shown at the beginning?
- What did you notice first: a movement, a picture, or an idea?
Middle of the Video
- What does the video tell us about how people shared stories in the past?
- What does the video say about sign language and spoken language?
- How did people experience stories before television and computers?
- What makes Arizona Theatre Matters different from other theater?
- What changed in the middle of the video?
End of the Video
- Who is theater for, according to the video?
- What three things does Arizona Theatre Matters blend together?
- What does the video say theater creates besides stories?
- How did the video feel at the end?
About Place: Pinal County, Arizona
- What place are we welcomed to at the very end of the video?
- Why do you think the video tells us the place at the end?
- Does knowing the place make the story feel different?
Ways Students Can Respond
- Point to pictures or symbols
- Use signs or gestures
- Draw one thing they remember
- Choose from picture cards
- Use an AAC device
- Stay quiet and just notice
Accessibility Notes
This toolkit is designed for students who experience the world in different ways. It supports Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing students, blind and low-vision students, neurodivergent learners, and students who use AAC or alternative communication. Activities do not require hearing, speaking, reading aloud, or physical movement. Students may choose how—and whether—to participate.Adaptations
- For group work: invite students to notice together or take turns leading.
- For one-on-one work: follow the student’s pace and preferred communication style.
- For mixed-age groups: allow older students to model without correcting others.
- For limited mobility: emphasize imagination, observation, or small gestures.