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BYU Theatre Education
Drama 2 Unit: Script Analysis

Annotating a Script

September 13, 2024 02:00 PM

by Jess Plewe

Objective: Students will improve their character and scene work by deeply analyzing excerpts from The Glass Menagerie and blocking them.

Standard L2.T.CR.8: Generate ideas from research and script analysis to devise a performance that is believable, authentic, and relevant in a drama/ theatre work.

Essential Questions

  • How does analysis improve understanding?
  • Why do people do what they do?

Enduring Understanding(s)

  • Subtext improves characterization
  • People’s actions are influenced by their past and their desires

Materials: 

  • The Student Spotlight Response Sheet
  • Copies of The Glass Menagerie for each student
  • Copies of Scene Four from the previous class

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, allow the class to ask a few questions of the student spotlight to get to know them better. 

Warm-Up

  • Have the students stand in a circle. Have them practice saying “Zip, Zap, Zop.” One person starts by clapping and pointing to someone as she says, “zip.” The person she pointed to claps, and points to someone else saying “zap.” The person she pointed to then claps, and points to someone saying “zop.”
  • Then it starts all over again with the next player clapping and pointing to someone saying “zip!” The game continues until someone gets out.
  • If a player says a word out of order, he’s out. If a player hesitates too long, she’s out. When players is out, they can stay in the game, but turn into “land mines” by crossing their arms over their chest. If a player still in the game points to one of the “mines,” he is out too.

Script Analysis: Characters and Beats

Instruction

  • Talk to the students about objectives/obstacles. Ask: 

    • What is an objective? (what a character wants)
    • What is an obstacle? (something that gets in the way of what they want)
  • Explain: If you achieve your objective, you need a new one. If you give up, you need a new one. If there is an interruption, you need to struggle to get back to your objective. 

  • Talk to the students about character relationships, asking:

    • Why are character relationships important?
    • What are some things that make character relationships interesting?
    • What do you need to know to establish effective relationships?

  • Talk about Character Work, asking: (most of these students have been in shows before)

    • What have you done in the past for Character Work? What was effective or ineffective? 
  • Character work should be done by the actor on their own time, so they already have insights, etc. prepared come rehearsal time. 

  • Beats, ask the students: What is a beat?

    • A beat is the smallest unit of action in a play. It contains a distinct beginning, middle, and end. In a beat, characters pursue a simple objective. 
    • beats are discoveries made by actors or directors. This work is called beat analysis.
    • As a rule, beats shift when a character’s motivation or routine changes. As you read the text, ask yourself, “Did the mood of the scene just change?” If the answer is yes, you have probably discovered a beat.
  • Ask the students: How do beats help you understand a scene better?

  • Blocking. Ask the students how to start blocking a scene?

    • Consider the Set Design, power dynamic, stage directions, etc. 
  • Explain that they will be blocking Scene 4 in partnerships later on

Exploration

  • Instruct the students to analyze Scene 4, writing down everything they need to do on the board 

    • Identify what each character's objective is
    • Identify what the obstacles are
    • Explain the relationship between Tom and Laura
    • Mark out the beats they determine in the scene. 
    • Get with a partner and block Scene 4 together
  • Once most students appear to be finished with their individual analysis, facilitate as needed to get them into partnerships and begin blocking Scene 4

Peer Feedback

  • Once students are finished blocking Scene 4, instruct them to find another partnership and perform their blocking for each other, reminding them to perform full-out. 
  • After each partnership performs for each other, the viewing partnership must respond with, “I like…, I wish…, I wonder…” 
  • Then the other partnerships performs and receives feedback. 

Discussion

  • Call the students back together, asking:

    • What did you notice about your partnership scenes?
    • What blocking choices were effective? 
    • How did your script analysis help you in deciding your blocking?
  • Emphasize this point: A lack of understanding/script analysis will show up in your acting onstage. It can make or break the truthfulness and overall quality of a production. 

Transition

  • To illustrate this, we are going to watch different versions of Scene 4 and discuss them.

Exploration

  • Pull up each of the following videos. After each video, ask the students what they liked, what they didn’t like, and what they noticed about the performance. Throughout this activity, ask the students about the importance of script analysis for actors. Emphasize that they need to be sure as performers that they are giving an interpretation of the character that is still supported by the text. 

  • After watching each video and discussing it, ask the students:

    • What was different between in your interpretations of Scene 4 and these ones? 
    • What was similar? 
    • What are the strengths of the performances you created? Weaknesses?
  • Emphasize the importance of script analysis in character work, and in character relationships, and explain we will be working more on detailed tactic work next class. 
Tags
acting skills scriptwork