Lesson 4: Shape/Physicality

Objective
● Students will be able to communicate meaning using shape and physicality in movement by creating a character based on one of Laban’s eight efforts of movement that participates in a character walk.

Standards

● Utah
○ Standard 7-8.T.P.4 - Communicate meaning using the body through space,

shape, energy, and gesture. ● National

• ○  TH:Pr4.1.6.b. Experiment with various physical choices to communicate character in a drama/theatre work.
• ○  TH:Cr3.1.7.b. Develop effective physical and vocal traits of characters in an improvised or scripted drama/theatre work.
• ○  TH:Pr6.1.8.a. Perform a rehearsed drama/theatre work for an audience. Materials needed

● Chairs stacked for more room

Warm-up

● Warm-Up Question
○ What’s an emotion to describe how you’re feeling today?

• ●  Stretch and Shakeout

• ●  Remind them that we’ll be doing a lot of movement today and there are two rules:

  • ○  1) The movement must be independent of others—in other words, no touching each other.

  • ○  And 2) You cannot use sound or your voice to convey meaning. Just be using your body!

    Hook

• ●  Game: Embodying Emotion

  • ○  Say each of the following emotions/prompts (stopping in between each

    one) and ask them to try and embody that emotion.

  • ○  Instruction for the students: Imagine the emotion/prompt first, then do

    whatever it feels like your body wants to, as long as you aren’t hurting anyone. Feel free to move around the space. Don’t make any sounds, just focus on how you can use your body and movement to portray the emotion. Start out small with each emotion, but make it more and more

exaggerated as you go on. Take mental note of those different ways to

move we already talked about and what feels best within your body.

• ○  Normal movement
• ○  Happy movement

■ The person you have a crush on just asked you out after school and now you’re walking home. It’s Christmas morning and you just opened up the gift you really wanted. You’re at a party when you get a call that you won the lottery.

○ Sad movement
■ You got a really bad grade on a test and now you have to walk home

in the rain. You’re packing your room up because you have to move across the country away from all your friends. You’re on your way to a funeral of someone you really cared about.

○ Angry or frustrated movement
■ You got detention and have to clean the room for something you

didn’t do. You’re grounded and confined to your room because your sibling blamed you for breaking the vase when they actually did it. Someone stole your phone as a joke and dropped it in the pool.

○ Fearful movement
■ You’re in a haunted house with your friends and scary creatures

keep popping up all around you. You keep hearing a creepy noise

under your bed as you’re trying to fall asleep. A lion is chasing you. ○ Disgusted movement

■ You’re at the beach with your feet in the water and you keep stepping on something squishy. You just had to eat your least favorite food and now you feel sick. You feel bugs crawling all over you.

Instruction/Practice

• ●  Discussion (5 min)

  • ○  How did your movement change based on what the emotion was?
  • ○  Why do you think that is?
  • ○  Did moving in a certain way make you feel a certain emotion?
  • ○  Was there any overlap with the emotions and the movement?
  • ○  Which emotions seem connected by the same movement?

• ●  Lesson (15 min): Introduce Rudolf Laban

  • ○  Has anybody ever heard of Rudolf Laban?
  • ○  Really liked the idea that emotion is connected to movement

  • ○  Explain each of these different sections of movement and demonstrate for

    them. Write them on the board so they’ll always have a place to reference them for the rest of the lesson. Then let them move. Also have them

experiment with one body part being one side of the spectrum and one body part being the other side. Example: Head is light and feet are heavy and vice versa.

■ Space/Direction

• ●  The “where” of an action
• ●  Direct/Indirect

• ●  Give a minute each to move through the space first directly,

  then indirectly. To help keep them focused, have them pick one spot in the room to move toward both directly/indirectly.

  ■ Weight

• ●  The “what” of an action
• ●  Heavy/Light

• ●  Give a minute each to move through the space first heavy,

  then light. ■ Time/Speed

• ●  The “when” of an action
• ●  Quick/Sustained

• ●  Give a minute each to move through the space first quickly,

  then sustained. ■ Flow

• ●  The “how” of an action
• ●  Bound/Free

• ●  Give a minute each to move through the space first bound,

  then free.

● Lesson (5 min): Then, he broke it down even more into what we call the eight

efforts. Pull up the PowerPoint, have them guess if you feel confident they’ll know. Encourage them to do the little movements that come to mind–whatever it is that will help them remember–and move around with it as we go over each one. You can stay seated or stand up if you’d like, but don’t move around the room. This shouldn’t be distracting, but just individual. (Auditory)

• ○  PowerPoint: Laban's Eight Efforts
• ○  Wring - indirect, sustained, heavy, bound

■ Wet towel, nervous hands ○ Dab - direct, quick, light, bound

■ When your mom is cleaning out a scrape, raindrops ○ Press - direct, sustained, heavy, bound

■ Pushing something across the floor, an elephant moving ○ Flick - indirect, quick, light, free

■ Shaking out your hands to get them dry, flicking at an insect

○ Glide - direct, sustained, light, free ■ Ice skating

• ○  Slash - indirect, quick, heavy, free ■ Knife
• ○  Float - indirect, sustained, light, free

■ Balloon, astronauts

○ Punch - direct, quick, heavy, bound ■ Boxing, fighting

• ●  Activity (20 min): Eight Efforts Movement Practice

  • ○  Stand in one spot first, try it with just your hands, then when you feel

    ready, transfer the movement to the rest of your body.

  • ○  Questions for side coaching

    • What is something that you can (effort)?
    • What is a creature or a person that (effort)?

    • How does it make you feel when you (effort)? What emotions does

      it bring up?

• ●  Character Work - Let them know we’ll be doing a character walk.

  • ○  Create a character based on whichever effort(s) that intrigue you most. Also choose an emotion that you think goes along with that effort. Begin the same way as we did with the efforts activity, then adjust based on the character.
  • ○  Give them 5 minutes to work on their character by themselves. Take the time to develop this character! It does not have to be human.

  • ○  Side-coaching Questions

    • How old are you?
    • How are you feeling today?
    • What are you hungry for?
    • What is your living space like?
    • What’s your name?
    • Are you human?

    • What makes you (emotion)? How do you react when you’re

      (emotion)?
      ● Happy

      ● Sad
      ● Angry
      ● Scared
      ● Disgusted

      Assessment (20 minutes)

● Character Walk

• ○  Have the class split into two lines to create a catwalk for students to walk down. Then have one or two students at a time move down the catwalk as their character.
• ○  Don’t be afraid to exaggerate with movement, even if it’s not realistic. Remember, not everyone has to be a human.
• ○  When they get to the end of the catwalk, people should guess what they think their effort was.

● Submit a grade in “physicality” on a scale of 1 (below standard) to 4 (advanced).

Challenge

● Pay attention to how you change your movement based on a certain emotion you’re feeling. If you’re ever feeling a negative emotion, try changing your movement to be aligned with a more positive emotion and see what happens. Be prepared to share next time.