by Jess Plewe
Objective: Students will demonstrate an understanding of actions by acting upon coaching during a monologue workshop.
Standard:
L2.T.R.4: Demonstrate the ability to receive and act upon coaching, feedback, and constructive criticism.
Essential Questions
- How does analysis improve understanding?
- Why is background information important?
- Why do people do what they do?
Enduring Understanding(s)
- Subtext improves characterization
- Analysis deepens understanding
- People’s actions are influenced by their past and their desires
Materials:
- The Student Spotlight Response Sheet
- A copy of Actions: An Actor’s Thesaurus
- Monologue Performance Rubric
- Something with which to grade students (computer/Canvas, piece of paper, etc.)
- Whiteboard and markers
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.
Transition
Quickly review for the students how class today is going to run, going over each step:
- Do a quick warm-up all together, then you have individual time to warm-up
- Determine workshop order by signing up for a slot on the white-board
Go through each workshop one at a time
- On this step, give further instructions, explaining: “When it’s your turn, you will enter onto the stage, and you will slate and then perform your entire monologue as you have practiced it, as though you were completing an audition. Afterwards, I will instruct you to perform your monologue again, but I will give you different tactics and actions to play. I will stop you multiple times in the middle of your monologue, giving you different tactics and actions to play each time. Eventually, I will stop you entirely, and then you will return to the audience while the next student goes up.”
Ask what questions students have regarding the schedule of class today.
Warm-up
Instruct the students to do the following activities to warm up. Complete each one all together before moving on to the next:
- Lip trills
- Sirens
- Massage the face/jaw
- Make face as big and as small as possible
- Shake their whole body
- Jump up and down 5 times
For the remaining part of their warm-up, instruct students to do whatever is necessary for them to feel prepared to perform and workshop their monologue today! Some suggestions you can give:
- Practice giving a confident slate before going into your monologue
- Mentally prepare yourself to need to repeat your monologue multiple times
- Perform your monologue to the wall, going full-out
Transition
- While the students are warming up individually, write out enough numbers on the board to account for all of the students, with space beside each number for students to write their names
- Call the student’s attention, and explain that the numbers on the board represent the performance order, and instruct students to come sign up for a time to present their monologue to the class.
- While students are signing up, prepare your grading station with your grading method (computer or paper) and a copy of Actions: An Actor’s Thesaurus.
Instruction
Once all the students are signed up, instruct the students to sit in the audience, and give some final instructions, saying:
- Remember to be good audience members, giving our full attention to each performer
- We will only clap at the very end of each workshop session. Do not clap in-between their application of feedback so as to not break the actor’s focus
- Each student’s feedback/workshop session will last around 5 minutes, with about one minute in between for the next performer to prepare, and for me to take some notes on the performance.
- Ask what questions students have before we begin.
Workshop Performance
Starting with the first student who signed up, complete the following, repeating until all students have performed or until class time ends:
- The student should enter the stage area, slate, then perform their entire monologue. You should time the duration of their monologue (not including their slate) to check that it is about 1 minute long
- Once the student has completed their monologue once, open the Actions book to a random page, and ask them to start their monologue over again, using a new action that you choose off of the random page you opened to. Assure the student that, even though the action might not fit their interpretation of the text, you want them to practice adapting to coaching they might receive in an audition setting.
- Allow the student to apply the coaching you provided for several sentences
Stop the student again (this will need to be interrupting them in their monologue) and repeat the process again, choosing a new action word for them to apply to their words, then allowing them to perform it.
- As this process continues, take note of how well the actor applies coaching, and grade them according to the rubric.
- Continue to repeat this process until the student reaches about 5 minutes, then thank them for their hard work, applaud their performance with the rest of the class, and finish taking any notes you need before the next student stands up to perform.
Wrap-up
This process will likely take an entire class period, if not multiple class periods. If you finish before the end of class, conduct a class-wide discussion of the following questions:
- What did you notice in yourself during your workshop session?
- What did you notice in others?
- What stood out to you?