Lesson 6: 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

● Chairs stacked

Warm-up

● Board Question
○ What other language do you wish you could speak?

• ●  Challenge Review

• ●  Stretch and Shakeout

  Hook

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

  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.

• ○  Or watch this clip from Despicable Me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roIzrtl_4J4
• ○  Make a list of gestures from the clip, then any others you can think of
• ○  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.

• ●  Choose one of the gestures up on the board and perform “Hey how’s it going?”

  with that gesture.

  • ○  What does the gesture tell us about the character?
  • ○  Does a different gesture change how it feels to play that character?
  • ○  Does adding a gesture make it easier to portray a mood or emotion?

• ●  Split into groups and have them come up to be assigned one of these emotions. Brainstorm together what some gestures are to communicate these emotions. Then, each group member will perform one of the lines below with one of the gestures they brainstormed. The class will then guess what emotion they were given.

  ○ Emotions

  • Happy/excited
  • Sad
  • Angry
  • Confused/unsure
  • Scared/nervous
  • Confident
  • Flirtatious
  • Secretive/Mischevious

  • Shy

    ○ Lines

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

  • “Can we talk?”

    Practice

    ● Rehearsal

○ Get in groups and roll the dice with different characters/settings/conflicts

to set up your scene. The catch? They cannot speak any words or make any sounds. They must only use gestures and movement to communicate what’s going on in the scene.

Assessment

● Performance

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

  guess what their given circumstances were and what the story was.

• ○  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).

  Extra

• ●  If there’s leftover time, play a game of “Why are you late?”

  • ○  One late employee, one boss, two co-workers

  • ○  The employee arrives late and the boss demands to know why they were

    late. The co-workers are pantomiming behind with potential excuses they can offer to the boss, previously chosen by the audience.