Go on a Walk with Me

Students will demonstrate their understanding of character movement by applying class activities in order to create a walk for their historical characters.

A ream of paper for name tags, markers, yarn, hole punch

Have a piece of paper with hole punches on the corners set on each students desk as they walk in. Have them grab a piece of yarn and a marker to make a nametag for their character. Explain that these nametags are going to be very important as we work today so that everyone knows who you are.

Who can imitate how someone walks in this room? Does anyone think that they can do it? How about how I walk? - if someone can do it let them and discuss how they did this. What made them look exactly like these people? If they cant thats okay, we are going to learn how.

Explain that we are going to practice portraying our historical characters walks today. We will continue to develop more movement on top of your characters with hand gestures, etc., but it is important to get the walk down first. Why do you think so? What is so important about a walk?

So how do we start? Does anyone have an idea of where you could begin a portrayal of someones walk? I want to make it clear that we are not necessarily imitating these characters word for word and walk for walk. This is a portrayal of your own. You are you portraying this character. How do you think they are supposed to move?

An important place to start is with your friends. We talked a little bit about the surface and the background of getting to know these characters youre portraying. By a description, one word, and a sentence. Think about how you get to know your best friends to a certain point.

We are going to observe each other as friends in this class today and how we all walk before we get into how your character might walk.

The first thing to observe is their center of gravity. How do they hold themselves? Then we observe what they lead with when they walk? Watch me, what body part initiates first when I walk?

Now add in gesture. What kind of way does your partner move their hands and their head when they walk? I want you to follow your partner around the room and see if you can imitate their walk exactly.

Ask. Tell me how this went for you? What did you do to learn the walk of your partners? Was it easy or hard? Why? Did you exaggerate some of the things they do?

Explain that sometimes we tend to over-exaggerate something that a person does to get a point across. How do you apply this to your characters? What are you going to do to create a walk for your character?

I want you to treat your characters like your best friends and get to know them so well that you can give them a walk. You have done your research on them, so you should know a lot more about them. How can your research help this experience? What are you going to use from your research to help you?

Have the whole class explore walking around as their character. Then have a few students go up in a group of 6-10, have them explore walking around as their character. Tell them to play with gesture, center of gravity.

Have the whole class get up and try it now. Tell them to come up with something pretty good because we will be doing a runway of their walks and showing it off to the class in a minute.

Take students back to class. Turn on some runway music and have them in pairs walk down the runway as their characters. I want them to experiment with time and use duration to make it all the way to the end of the runway and then turn around and walk back. I will be taking notes on what I see and how well you have embodied this character and give them a 1-10 based on their ability to portray them.

Have students pull out their journals and begin it as, I went on a walk today They need to write observations of what they discovered about their character based off today and how their research helped them.

: Ask. What have you learned about your characters today?

What can you glean from todays experience and apply to acting in theatre?

How does this apply to characters you might play in an actual show?

Keep exploring these and learning about them when you can. I want to keep asking you what you are discovering.

Return and Report Day

Students will demonstrate their knowledge gained from their research the previous day of their characters by completing the get to know you game.

Get to know you game grids Lesson 3.Get To Know You Grid, students need to bring their research printed if they have not already done so

Research

Have people pull out their research and have them share with a group something interesting they learned about their characters. Then have them share with the class some interesting facts about what they discovered about their characters. What did they learn that they didnt already know about their character?

Pull out getting to know you grids. Hand one to each person and have them go around and get to know each others characters. They are required to go around and get the signature of the characters on their grids when they have found that specific quality.

Allow students 10-15 minutes time to get to know other characters

After students have played the grid game, go through and put a star or check mark next to the squares that they dont know about your own character.

Lets talk about these get to know your character more and the others in the room. Why would I have you get to know other characters?

What did you discover about your own character? Did your research help you in this assignment? If not, I want you to take this and find out how these relate to your characters. Come back and be ready to tell me how.

Pull out laptops again and allow them to do more research on their characters based on the grids. Think about how this applies to your character if you are going to perform as this person.

Hand in your grids to the basket. Share one new fact with another classmate that you learned from the grid assignment.

Historical Characters and Characterization Processes

Students will demonstrate their understanding of what is important to identify Historical characters by participating in instructor led activities and discussions that lead them towards these discoveries.

papers and bowls for three-way charades.

Play three-way charades but they have to do it on historical characters. Pass out little slips of paper and have students take three. They are required to write a historical character on each slip of paper and put it in the bowl. For the first round they just have to describe them as many as they can in one minute. Next, they need to give one word to describe this person, the third round they have to act them out. You might have to divide them into two groups to play this game and compete against each other.

Stop students after playing round one. Ask. Why might this have been easy or difficult for you? What kinds of things did you describe in this first activity to help your friends get the person right? Who were the easiest to get?

Stop after describing in one word:

Stop after acting them out:

We are going to play another game flashback photography Where we recreate pictures of these historical characters and look at their lives in a flashback photo based on their lives. This is to show that every person or character is 3 dimensional. Each person goes up one at a time, the whole class does not have to go at the same time. (practice with Moses parting the red sea) On person starts, maybe they start as Moses. They would go up and say Im Moses. Then others would add on to the picture in any way that they want creating an entire 3D picture with their bodies. Examples might be something like:

Explain that it is important to know the simple most understandable facts about your characters that are recognizable to others like in charades, but also the in depth back stories of these characters just like in this flashback game. We are going to learn both about our characters in this unit. This is what you should do when you are becoming a character in a play. For example, if you are the character of Michael Jackson, you need to know about their surface identifiable things. Such as Thriller, Jackson Five, dancing, etc. But also, his backstory is important such as where he grew up, what got him into singing, why he kept dancing and singing, who was important to him in his life etc.

Why do you think it is important to know how to become someone else in theater? How do you think we learn to become someone else? Do we completely get rid of ourselves? What do we have to change? Discuss with students the importance of using elements of yourself in character development, and the importance of creating real characters.

Next time we will be doing some research on your characters that you want to perform in depth.

On a piece of paper please write your 1,2, and 3rd choices of historical characters to be and put your name on it. Justify your choices. Why do you want to be this character, what can you do with this character that will challenge you and be unique? I will try to give everyone their first choice, but I dont want there to be doubles. Try to go for a risk, be something that you can really embody. Think about someone that you might not normally get to be because of your normal shape and size.

Research Day!

Students will demonstrate their in-depth knowledge of their historical characters by doing a research collection assignment.

computers to research on, character choice papers that students wrote last time with the character you will be performing as written on them.

Hand out everyones character choices to research. 

Explain that today we will be doing some research on our historical characters. Ask. Why is it important to do research on your characters?

Why is it important to do this kind of research as an actor? In life?

Present research assignment for students up on the board. Students need:

Have students print this research and turn it into the basket for points. Make sure it is filled out correctly and give them 15 points for having all the correct information.

The Characters Mind

Students will demonstrate their understanding of how their characters might act and think by filling out a character worksheet on their characters opinions about the world.

Journals, agree/disagree papers taped on either side of the room. Character worksheet Lesson 6.In My Mind's Eye Worksheet.

video clip. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNcw3lllJ4w

Finish watching Viewpoint video clips from last time as needed. Discuss how they can apply that movement to themselves. Ask them what things they have discovered about their characters if there is anything new.

Ask. What does our brain do for us every day? How does our mind affect us?

Have students close their eyes and imagine a busy day in their characters life. What did they think about? What made them mad that day? Happy? Are they tired? Where did they go? What people did they see?

Have students pull out their journals and write a journal entry as their character. Have them write about this day they just imagined.

Discuss these journal entries and ask about the belief part. What did they choose to write?

Ask: How many of your characters are more religious people or have some form of religion that is important in their lives? How many dont? How does this affect the way your character might think?

Ask students opinions on black licorice.

Ask. Have any of you thought about the fact that your background makes up the way that you think? How you are brought up, what you are exposed to and the people you interact with affect what your opinion of things is.

Watch

clip. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNcw3lllJ4w

Play the Agree/Disagree game. This is where you read statements. Your students have to decide what their character would agree or disagree with based on these statements. They choose to go towards agree, disagree, or neutral. Ask students their reasoning behind this. Why? What made you choose this? How is this going to help you with your further character development?

- People are never satisfied with what they have; they always want something more or something different.

-People should read

those books that are about real events, real people, and established facts.

-All students should be required to study art and music in secondary school.

-Reading fiction (such as novels and short stories) is more enjoyable than watching movies.

-

people who earn a lot of money are successful.

-Playing a game is fun only when you win.

- When people succeed, it is because of hard work. Luck has nothing to do with success.

-People should sometimes do things that they do

enjoy doing.

-Television, newspapers, magazines, and other media pay too much attention to the personal lives of famous people such as public figures and celebrities.

Ask. How might have your own opinions swayed the way you answered these questions?

Have students go back to their seats and fill out a character sheet (In My Minds Eye) that has something to do with their opinions about things. They need to fill it out to the best of their ability. Afterwards we will do an activity with it. Students will turn this worksheet in at the end of class.

(If time allows): Hot seating. Have students take turns three at a time come up and sit in the hot seats. I want people to be able to ask them questions about their opinions on things and other stuff about their life. They need to act/try to talk like their character would when they answer these questions. Have them wear name tags for this activity. Give lots of students turns and discuss their answers.

Lets Talk

Students will understand the fundamentals to creating a character voice by performing a contentless scene using the voice of their historical character.

Play the animal voice game. Students stand in a circle with one person in the middle. That person sticks out their hand and points it at someone. They spin around and when they stop they go to someone and say make a gorilla noise. The person needs to disguise their voice by saying the gorilla sound. After saying the sound, the person in the middle has to guess who it is. If they guess right, they trade places with that person. If they are wrong they have to spin around and play again.

Discussion: What did you guys notice about voice in this game?

Voice is a huge part of what defines us as people and actors. How we use our voices tells us a lot about who we are.

-Who was a person that you got right off the bat because of the way they sounded?

- In theatre if you can learn how to manipulate your voice to sound different in different ways, then you will be able to play many different characters in shows. You also will be able to tell a lot about a persons story by understanding the way they use their voice.

Go back to Drama Foundations and Review: Rate, pitch, tone, volume, diction and what they mean. Have students go in their journals and write what their character talks like based on rate, pitch, tone, volume, and diction. Have them turn to someone by them and say as their character: I eat fruit with my cold cereal.

: Did any of you go home and research how your character sounds? What was a specific character trait in the way they sounded that you want to add to your own vocal work? How are you going to apply this?

Ask. What did you do to make your version different than all the others?

Talk about how people can change their voice but sometimes it requires physicality.

We are now going to watch a video clip. I want you to observe how he uses the vocal tools but also his physicality and movement to be these characters. Apply these to you.

(Let it go) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjbPszSt5Pc

Pull up a PowerPoint of a few pictures of some of the students historical characters. I have some pictures of peoples historical characters up here. I want you guys to create how this person might sound to you. The PowerPoint changes based on the different characters that students might choose in this unit.

Create a voice for your historical character and do the following scene (contentless scenes) for a group of students. Have students vote on who should do it for the whole class. Or I will just draw names out of a hat and they will come up to read the script together.

Move It Like You Mean It

Students will demonstrate their understanding of viewpoints and other movement techniques by applying a specific movement to their characters.

review viewpoints from Anne Bogart, clip from

about walking https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9db4o8c5X0I

Viewpoint work taken from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viewpoints

Watch the clip from

about gliding. This is just to get them back into the walking mode. Remind them that we learned about walks last time by the following entry:

Review walks from last time. Ask them to walk around the space and refocus back into that character you were last time.

Talk about actions that you do every day.

Have students imagine in their heads on an average morning. What are some things you do every day?

Now think about how your character goes about their every day. Close your eyes, dont answer this question, just think about it. What is an action that they do every day in their schedule?

We need to discover these things today to help us create the perfect movement. Remember I want your characters to become your best friends.

Introduce Anne Bogarts

. Talk about how this is one method to develop your character movement. Through a very brief introduction to Anne Bogarts

we will be creating personal movements for our historical characters today. The first one is:

Shape

Shape - The contour or outline of bodies in space; the shape of the body by itself, in relation to other bodies, or in relation to architecture; think of lines, curves, angles, arches all stationary or in motion.

Activity:

Time- the next Viewpoint we will discuss today:

Explain that there are different things that fall under time according to Anne Bogart:

Space- specifically location in this situation: (space) the location of something changes the way you move.

Explain that you are going to call out a specific location and you want them to move how you would move in those locations.

How did your bodies change to fit the place or feeling? What does this do to your movement?

Lastly, we are going to discuss Story

Think in your mind an action they do often. Taylor Swift plays in concerts often and has a guitar. Bethany Hamilton surfs and prepares her surfboard. Amelia Earhart checks her plane. pantomime an action you do every day. Let the class explore and create this movement thinking about shape, time, space, and now story. After exploring and creating this, have six go up at a time to show the class as their characters performing this story that they do every day. Ask for observations on different and unique movements.

Write three things you learned about your characters movement in relation to Anne Bogarts viewpoints in your journal and show them to someone by you before you go.

Stand in a circle and have every person say something that they learned about how their character moves.

Historical Character Lunch

Students will be able to create a solid three-dimensional historical character using movement, expression, voice, and more by interacting with other characters in a 30-minute improved performance.

students need to bring a snack or a treat to share with at least 8 people in the class, cant be homemade, **check for allergies in the class. Character analysis sheets Lesson 8.Character Analysis Worksheet. Rubrics Lesson 8.Historical Character Lunch Evaluation.

Play speed dating as historical characters to get everyone warmed up. Give them 1 minute to get to know each other as best as they can as their characters, then have them rotate. This is to help students get to know each others characters and to get warmed up and used to acting as them.

Pass out Character analysis worksheets. Have students fill them out as much as they can while you get set up for the character lunch.

Explain to students what you are watching for one more time before we begin the lunch. Give them a few minutes to get dressed up and set out snacks for the performance.

Let the lunch begin. Assess students ability to improv for a full 30 minutes as they portray their characters and interact with other historical characters. Take notes on great things you see from each person so that you can discuss them at the end of class. Play some music in the background so that they feel more comfortable.

Give students time to clean up and get back into their regular clothes again after the 30 minutes is over. Have them finish filling out their character analysis.

If you have time at the end of class, discuss what happened, read your notes to the class of what you loved and ask for any other observations. What was their experience like? Did they enjoy this? What was hard? How are you going to apply this to the next thing you do in theatre? How did this help you with life and observing other peoples stories?