Showing; Not Telling
by Hilary Hansen
Description:
This workshop will use activities from Anne Bogart, Augusto Boal, and Viola Spolin to help beginning theatre students (secondary education) better understand how to create a character through showing not telling.
Workshop Directions:
Materials:
Paper
Pencils/Pens
Aims:
- To introduce and familiarize students with basic character development through non-verbal communication, exploration of expressive and descriptive movement, revealing characteristics and aspirations of characters, and verbal interpretation of characters.
- To expand students' views of 'playing'.
- To help students lose some of their inhibitions.
Objectives:
- Students will warm up and focus
- Students will explore the ideas and definitions of shape and gesture with their bodies
- Students will build a character through showing, not telling in a group.
- Students will build a character based off of their childhood dream of who they wanted to be when they grew up through showing not telling.
- Students will identify characteristics and aspirations of their peers through interpretation of "showing not telling" activities.
Warm-Up Shape:
- Everyone stand alone somewhere in the space focusing on his/her body.
- Become aware that his/her body is already making a shape.
- Create new shapes with his/her body
- Make only shapes which include angles, lines, hard edges
- Translate those shapes into curved shapes.
- Combine lines and curves in his/her body by isolating different body parts.
- Create contrast and juxtaposition and tension in the various shapes.
- Try to keep movement fluid, so one shape leads to the next.
- Add different tempos. Notice how different tempos lead to different kinds of shapes.
- Now move through the space with the shapes.
- Allow contact with other shapes (people).
Activity 1--Gesture
- First encourage the students to no longer think of what they are doing as Shape but as Expressive Gesture. Explain that they will be moving with something behind the movement (a feeling, thought, idea)
- Next tell them to express a feeling with their gesture. Give them ideas (joy, failure, excitement, fear, sadness)
- Now have them express an idea. (freedom, justice, chaos, war, balance, outer space)
- Ask the students to not the parts of the body they tend to rely on and those they ignore.
- Next have the students include the parts of their bodies that they are not used to working with, continuing to give them ideas, and emotions to base their movements off of.
- Next have the students take whatever gesture they are in and let evolve from an expressive one to a behavioral one. This means taking something relatively abstract, which you would not normally see someone do, and transforming it into something relatively concrete, which you might likely see someone do on the street, at school, in the home, or at the office.
- Next have them create gestures that give information about a person's body and physical health. These include wounds, scars, disabilities; responses to/expressions of health and illness, such as a sneeze, yawn, buoyant walk, rolling of the neck, etc; and reactions to the weather, such as shivering, a wipe of sweat, fanning oneself, buttoning up, putting a hand out to feel the rain or snow, etc.
- Next instruct them to make gestures that belong to specific period or culture.
- Next have them make gestures that tell of a person's eccentricities, quirks, habits; a twitch, a way of scratching cocking the head, curling the lips, a nose scrunch, a foot tap, an odd bend of the elbow.
- Next ask them to make gestures that have thoughts or words behind them, i.e., "Hello," "Come here," "Enough," etc.
- Ask them to use more parts of their bodies to generate behavioral gestures. Use smaller parts: a finger, a toe, an eyebrow, a corner of the lip.
Activity--2 Who Am I?
- Next have one student volunteer to leave the room while the group decides who the volunteer (who left the room) will be, someone who is usually surrounded by much activity. (bus driver, new son-in-law, etc.)
- Explain that the group cannot use their voices, only shape, gesture, movement.
- Explain that the group must find characters to play in the scenario that will help the volunteer know who they are.
- Then the volunteer comes back in the room while the others one at a time or in small groups, enter in relation to the Who and become involved in appropriate activity until the Who is known by the volunteer watching. Do not let it become a guessing game, the Who will emerge if the volunteer remains open to what is happening and involved in the activity (You may need to explain this to everyone).
Activity--3 The Child's Dream
- Half of the group write their names on pieces of paper together with the name or description of the person, hero or mythical figure they dreamt of being when they were children; the other half of the group watch.
- First, the participating group moves around the space using only their bodies to show the main characteristics of the characters they are playing. They must reveal what fascinated them about this childhood dream, using only gesture, facial expression and movement, all playing at the same time, but without relating to one another.
- Side-coach them to express a feeling with their characters. Give them ideas (joy, failure, excitement, fear, sadness)
- Now have them express an idea. (freedom, justice, chaos, war, balance, outer space)
- Side-coach them to create gestures that give information about their character's body and physical health. These include wounds, scars, disabilities; responses to/expressions of health and illness, such as a sneeze, yawn, buoyant walk, rolling of the neck, etc; and reactions to the weather, such as shivering, a wipe of sweat, fanning oneself, buttoning up, putting a hand out to feel the rain or snow, etc.
- Next have them make gestures that tell of their character's eccentricities, quirks, habits; a twitch, a way of scratching cocking the head, curling the lips, a nose scrunch, a foot tap, an odd bend of the elbow.
- After a few minutes tell them to look for a partner. They can start dialogues with their partners, but without saying anything that will obviously reveal who they are.
- Then read out the names of the participants one at a time, and those who were watching the game, as well as those who were playing it, must describe the characteristics they saw in that person. They should not try to guess the actual name of the childhood aspiration, but rather try to describe how the person they were watching behaved, because this will reveal what they really wanted to be, using the name or image so someone real or fantastic as the vehicle for that aspiration.
Conclusion/Reflection:
- Ask students how it felt not having words to express themselves.
- Ask them how this could be useful in creating a character when doing a scene or a monologue or performing a character in a full-length play or when creating original theatre.
- Ask why it's important to communicate not only with words but our bodies.