Lesson 5: Gesture

Objective

● Students will be able to communicate meaning using gesture in movement by performing silent scenes.

Standards

● Utah
○ Standard 7-8.T.P.4 - Communicate meaning using the body through space, shape, energy, and gesture.
● National

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

Sources

• One-off Workshop: Gestures
• What’s Your Character’s Signature Gesture?
• Theatre Game #57 - Gesture Line. From Drama Menu 2: Second Helpings - ...

Materials needed

● Empty space to move

Warm-up

● Warm-Up Question
○ What other language do you wish you could speak?

• ●  Challenge Review

• ●  Body Warm-Up

  Hook

• ●  Heads Up/Charades - https://charades.app/

○ I will private message each student a prompt for what they can charade as

they act it out for the class, who can unmute to guess or put in the chat what they think the person is acting out.

Instruction

• ●  Power Point - Explain what gestures are and what they mean. Watch a clip from Charlie Brown and have them look for gestures that the characters use to communicate meaning either without their line or to add more to their line.

  • ○  And/or watch this clip from Despicable Me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roIzrtl_4J4

  • ○  Make a list of gestures from the clip on the Zoom whiteboard, then have everyone think of at least one more gesture they can think of to add to the whiteboard themselves.

    • Any from movies, TV, etc. that common characters do?

    • Remind them that this needs to be PG— no inappropriate or crass

      gestures, no gang signs, etc. Tell them you believe in them to be

      more creative than that.

• ●  Emotion Sculptures Gallery

○ Give one student an emotion via private chat and they have to do one gesture that they think expresses that emotion. Tell the students that once they think they know what emotion that person is trying to portray, they should pick another gesture that fits under that emotion until everyone is doing a different gesture. Once everyone is doing a gesture, they should all unmute and yell what they think the emotion was.

Practice

■ Happy/excited
■ Sad
■ Angry
■ Confused/unsure ■ Scared/nervous ■ Confident

■ Flirtatious
■ Secretive/Mischevious ■ Shy
■ Embarrassed

● Gesture Scenes
○ Split into breakout rooms with 3-4 people. Each person will be choose a

different emotion—it’s more fun if you get more specific with your emotion. Each group member will have to perform one of the lines below with a gesture that communicates their emotion. They should try and link all the lines together into a scene with a beginning, middle, and end (as we discussed in the previous unit). The class will then guess what emotion each group member chose. Clarify that the gestures DON’T have to fit the line; they have to fit the emotion. They may also use other gestures

throughout the scene to help make their emotion clear—it doesn’t just have to be on their line.

■ Lines

• ●  “What do you think about that?”
• ●  “I have an idea.”
• ●  “It’s 9 o’clock... you know what that means.”

• ●  “Can we talk?”

  Assessment

  ● Performance

• ○  Perform the scenes for each other and have the rest of the class guess the

  emotions.

• ○  What gestures helped to communicate what was going on in the scene?

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

Challenge

● Keep an eye out for different gestures that people use throughout the day. Keep a list in your phone (or in your brain, if you have a good memory) and come back prepared to discuss the gestures you saw—interesting ones, ones you thought were fun, ones that were used most commonly, etc.