By Jess Plewe
Objective: Students will demonstrate a basic understanding of script analysis by workshopping a short scene using context clues from the stage directions and dialogue alone.
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 is background information important?
Enduring Understanding(s)
- Subtext improves characterization
- People’s actions are influenced by their past and their desires
Materials:
- The Student Spotlight Response Sheet
- Printed copies of Trifles Cold Read for every student
- Copies of specific pages from Introduction to Play Analysis by Cal Printer and Scott E. Walters
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 - Movement telephone
- Get all the students into a circle. Do a movement accompanied by a sound (ex: waving while saying Hello). Instruct the students that this movement and sound will be passed around the circle one by one. The goal of this activity is to copy the movement and sound of the person next to you as the activity goes on, which means that any slight change they make, you should also make.
- Play a few rounds, occasionally pausing the action and allowing a new movement and sound to be created
Transition:
- Gather the students back and say, “Today we are moving into a new unit, play analysis”
Play/Script Analysis
Instruction/Discussion
Ask the students and discuss:
- What is play analysis?
- Why is it important?
- How can you use it as an actor?
For the next part of class, you will go over important tools of Script Analysis with the students.
- Hand out copies of the Introduction to Play Analysis book to the students, and instruct them to form into four groups
Once the groups are formed, assign each group one of the sections listed below, and instruct them to read it together and be prepared to teach it to the rest of the class.
- 1: First impressions- mood (pg 3)
- 2: given circumstances (pg 3)
- 3: characters, objectives (pg 3-4)
- 4: synthesis (pg 4-5)
For each of the remaining tools listed below, paraphrase the information from the related pages in the book. After paraphrasing the information, ask the discussion questions below each tool.
Note unfamiliar words/references (pg. 10)
- Why is this important?
- When have you used this or experienced this as an actor?
- When have you noticed this as an audience member?
Visualize stage directions (pg. 10-11)
Where do stage directions come from?
- Most often from the stage manager’s notes from the first production
- Are they necessary or simply to affect views of characters?
- What do stage directions do for the audience? For the character?
Dialogue (based on pg 13-15)
- How have you used this as an actor?
- How does subtext affect characterization? Examples?
Play’s mood (based on pg 16)
- What are your emotional reactions to the play?
- How does this affect characterization?
To help students understand the importance of script analysis as an actor, offer some examples of plays/movies the students may know, and ask them about certain characters. Potential examples below:
An actor portrays Romeo in Romeo and Juliet as a jock
- Does that match Romeo as he is written? Why or Why not?
- How would you portray Romeo? Why?
An actor portrays Belle in Beauty and the Beast as a stuck-up snooty teenager.
- Does that match her character? Why or Why not?
- How would you portray Belle? Why?
Script Analysis - Trifles Cold Read
Exploration
Read through the Trifles Cold Read as a class, choosing three student volunteers to help read, one to read for Mrs. Hale, one to read for Mrs. Peters, and one to read the stage directions.
After reading, ask the following questions:
- What was your overall impression?
- What are words you do not know?
- What are the stage directions saying?
- What is the dialogue saying?
Practice
Have the students pair up and practice scene with partner applying script analysis
- Encourage them to read like a detective, look up words they don’t know, apply characterization based on context clues, etc.
Performance
- Pair up the partnerships, and instruct them to perform their interpretation of the scene for each other.
- After each partnership performs, the viewing partnership will respond to them using “I liked… I wished… I wondered…”
Debrief
- Come back together as a class and ask the students things that stood out to them from class today, and interesting things they noticed watching another group performing the same scene in a different way.