by Jess Plewe
Objective: Students will physically experiment with different qualities of movement by engaging in Anne Bogart’s Viewpoints of Space (Topography and Shape).
Standard L1.T.P.4: Use body to communicate meaning through space, shape, energy, and gesture.
Essential Questions
- How does the way we move convey meaning?
- Where does meaning in performance come from?
Enduring Understanding(s)
- Movement conveys meaning
- Artistic differences between symbolic and didactic movement
- The way we interact with time tells a story
Materials:
- 2 Hi-Chew candies
- The Student Spotlight Response Sheet
Spotlight
- Pull up the Student Spotlight Responses Sheet and choose a student who has not been spotlighted yet.
- Without reading their name, go through all of their answers. After reading all their answers, have students guess which student is the spotlight for today. Once correctly guessed, give the guesser and the student spotlight one Hi-Chew each.
- Allow the class to ask a few questions of the student spotlight to get to know them better.
Warm-up: Do you love your neighbor?
- All students should grab a chair and assemble them into a large circle, with all the chairs facing inwards. One caller will be in the middle, and will ask someone “Do you love your neighbor?”
- The student being asked can provide two responses. If they respond “Yes” then the neighbors of the student being asked must switch chairs. If they respond “No,” then they must follow-up with “but I love everyone who… (has sneakers on, has blonde hair, is in drama 2, etc.)”
- Every student in the circle who resembles the phrase must stand and find a new empty chair. The goal of all the students in the circle is to avoid getting into the middle, and the goal of the person in the middle is to sneak into an empty seat during transitions.
Hook: Line Up
Instruct students to line up according to Age, Height, Month born, hair length, hair color, by grade all nonverbally, **USE GESTURES!**
- Time students each line-up chalenge. Encourage them to get faster each time
Review
- Review with a partner the definition of Gestures,c(movement that conveys an emotion/idea) and demonstrate a gesture that they saw used this morning before class.
Viewpoint #3: Topography
Instruction
Introduce Topography viewpoint:
- Write it on the board with a simple definition: Topography- Pathways on the floor (how your character walks)
- Ask: How does changing this change a story?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3TV1Zuf1SU
- Above is a video showing examples of different ways to walk from the Suzuki acting method. Quickly review with the student that Suzuki is an old theatre tradition where they have stock characters who each walk in a very codified and specific way.
- After viewing the video, ask: What different pathways do you notice?
Exploration
Character Walk
Call out different pathways for the students to walk: straight, curved, zig zag, spiral, walking like paint on their feet. Allow the students time to explore each pathway before calling out the next.
- Side Coaching: What kind of character would walk like that?
Then, call out characters/occupations and ask them to walk like that character (princess, king, doctor, soldier, robot, zombie)
- Ask: What are some pathways these characters use to walk? Why did you make that choice for that character?
Red Light, Green Light
- One student is at one end of the classroom, while all other students are touching the opposite wall. The student who is the caller, calls “green light” when they are not facing the other students, and “red light” when they turn around. The rest of the students’ goal is to be the first to get to the caller without getting caught moving during the red light.
- RULES: while moving towards the student caller, the rest of the students must use a pathway other than straight lines.
Viewpoint #4: Shape
Instruction
Introduce Shape viewpoint:
- Write it on the board with a simple definition: Shape - Using your body to create shapes to show a character or story
- Ask: How does changing this change a story?
Exploration
Character Shapes
Instruct students to spread across the room. Instruct them to make character shapes with their body based on the prompts you give:
- Business person, baker, king, dancer, swimmer, farmer
While students are still spread across the room, instruct them to make more abstract shapes based on the following prompts:
Angular- make your body as angular as possible
- Before moving onto the next, encourage them to find a new way to use angular shapes in their bodies
Round- make your body as round as possible
- Before moving onto the next, encourage them to find a new way to use round shapes in their bodies
Combination- combine angular and round shapes in abstract shapes.
- Before moving onto the next, encourage them to find a new way to use both shapes in their bodies
Group Work
- Put students into groups by counting them off 1-6
Give half of the groups the viewpoint of topography as their focus and the other three the viewpoint of shape. Give each group a given circumstance and tell them to create a 1-minute non-verbal performance that uses the viewpoint
- Where: professional kitchen, aquarium, school, carnival, bank, farm
- Who: Doctors, lifeguards, explorers, robbers,
- Event: Zombie apocalypse, robbing a museum, discovering a fossil
- Give students 10 minutes to create and practice a performance
Performance
- Call students back together and determine a performance order.
- After each performance, ask audience members to guess which Viewpoint they were showing and give feedback on where the group used their viewpoint to tell their story