Theater, the imagined and enacted world of human beings, is one of the primary ways children learn about life--about actions and consequences, about customs and beliefs, about others and themselves. Theater arts benefit the student because they cultivate the whole person, gradually building many kinds of literacy while developing intuition, reasoning, imagination, and dexterity into unique forms of expression and communication. The content and the interrelatedness of the standards go a long way toward producing student understanding. But meeting the standards cannot and should not imply that every student will acquire a common set of artistic values. The standards provide a positive and substantive framework for those who teach young people why and how the arts are valuable to them as persons and as participants in a shared culture. The theater arts standards for Colorado schools are: (1) Students develop interpersonal skills and problem-solving capabilities through group interaction and artistic collaboration; (2) Students understand and apply the creative process to fundamental skills of acting, playwriting, and directing; (3) Students understand and apply the creative process to skills of design and technical production; (4) Students understand and relate the role of theater arts to culture and history; (5) Students analyze and assess the characteristics, merits, and meanings of traditional and modern forms of dramatic expression; and (6) Students know and apply connections between theater and other disciplines. This booklet cites a rationale for each standard and describes what students should know and be able to do at kindergarten and grade 4, at grade 5 and grade 8, and at grade 9 and grade 12. (Contains a glossary and a standards matrix.) (NKA)