Brigham Young University's Theatre Education Database

First invite the students to begin walking around the room. Ask them to walk at a normal “tempo.” Then invite students with blonde hair to walk very quickly, invite students with dark brown/black hair to walk slowly, and invite all other hair colors to walk at a normal pace. Tell the students that they need to be aware of each other so no one runs into each other. Then, transition the students to changing the duration of the tempo. Each three seconds, students will change tempos. Then invite the students to change tempos every five seconds.

Next, invite students to get in groups of three. Choose a leader, a repeater, and a kinesthetic responder. When you call out an emotion, one person will “repeat” the emotion, and the other will “react” to the emotion. Some emotions include sad, angry, ecstatic, happy, frustrated, annoyed, in love, hate, etc. Switch partner roles after two or three emotions. Have the students take their seats.

Step 1: Transition/Instruction: As you may have observed already, the Viewpoints are closely connected to one another. In some ways, you can’t have one without the other. But, today, I want you to really try to consider each Viewpoint one it’s own, independent of each other.

Step 2: SPATIAL RELATIONSHIP: In soft focus, invite the students to begin walking around the grid on the floor. Ask the students to be respectful to the tape on the floor since it will be needed for a few more class periods. Student need to begin exploring the grid. Spend a few minutes walking solely on the grid, and then spend a few minutes walking against the grid, and spend a few minutes exploring (free viewpoints) on or against the grid. After a few minutes of exploring, stop the group. Then let them notice their “spatial relationship” to each other or how close or far they are from another person. (The activity is taken from The Viewpoints Book by Anne Bogart and Tina Landau, page 44).

Step 3: Discussion: Discuss how much space communicates. We generally have a comfortable “bubble” around us. At what times do we allow or not allow people to enter that “bubble.” What kinds of things would closeness or distance communicate on stage? Closeness might communicate emotional closeness, while distance might communicate emotional distance.

Step 4: SPATIAL RELATIONSHIPS, continued: Get the class back on the grid, invite them to begin walking on the grid, making only 90 degree turns, once again in soft focus. Everyone should make movement choices in extremes, either want to be really close to people or extremely far. This shouldn’t become a chasing game. Variation: Students should move closer to people who look similar in some way like hair color, clothes color, or gender.

Step 5: Group practice: Divide the group into five groups; each group will be given a word. The groups must communicate these words using ONLY spatial relationships (i.e. neutral faces, neutral bodies, no words, simply space). The students will introduce their words, and then present their word on the grid. Words can include: love, war, hate, family, friendship, anger, etc. After the performances, invite the students back to their seats.

Step 6: TOPOGRAPHY: Give the definition of Topography. It is “landscape, the floor pattern, the design we create in movement through space.” (p. 11). The grid we’ve been working on is a type of “floor pattern” or topography.

Step 7: Continued: Invite the students to get on their feet. They next need to begin exploring the “topography” of the grid. Invite them to choose either large steps or small steps. After exploring a few minutes, stop the action and ask, “what does walking in such a rigid floor pattern communicate?” Ask them, how it changed when they took smaller or larger steps. Have the students continue exploring the space, but this time, invite them to imagine each square on the grid is a circle. Invite them to explore the space with a circular shape, and then in a triangular floor pattern.

Step 8: Group activity: Most of the time, we don’t walk around in circular or square or triangular floor patterns. However, often depending on our mood or the type of character we are playing on stage, we move through the space differently. How would someone who is happy move differently through the space then someone who is sad? Next, divide the class into five different groups, each group will be given a length of butcher paper.

Each group will be given a type of typography, and each group member will need to create the floor pattern on the butcher paper by tracing their feet in the topography on the butcher paper. Possible patterns include: confused, prancing, drunken, down-trodden, etc. The students will present their work and their floor pattern, and describe how they created the floor pattern.

(Any remaining time should be used to answer questions and work on silent movies. During the group work, go around and ask each group how they will use space and topography in their silent movie.)