Lesson 5: Interpreting Emotion and Ideas with Movement
Lesson Objective:
Students will demonstrate their ability to express emotion and ideas with their bodies by beginning the rehearsal process for a movement-based group performance.
Standards:
TH:Pr4.1.7. Use various staging choices to enhance the story in a drama/theatre work.
Hook (10 minutes):
Have students find their own space in the room. When I call out an emotion or theme, they will create a still image that expresses that theme or emotion.
Power
Happiness
Confusion
Excitement
Joy
Fear
Miscommunication
War
Peace
Violence
Fighting
Weakness
Disgust
Step 1 (15 minutes):
Get into pairs. Choose a word together, perhaps from the list we just went through in the activity. Individually, create an image. Share these images with your partner. Find a way to combine your two images. Present this to another pair. Find a way to add movement to your image. Share this image and movement with the class. (pull a student up and do a sped up example of this to show the class how they should be working together to accomplish this).
Step 2:
If you understand completely how shape shows emotion and you feel you have learned to do it yourself, hold up three fingers. If you mostly understand but you have more questions and you feel like you need a little more practice, put up two fingers. If you do not understand at all, hold up one finger.
Step 3:
TEMPO:
Have a student walk across the room.
Have a student run across the room.
What emotions or feelings does that express? Why are they so different? What about the movement makes them express something so different?
While the song is playing, write down or think about some themes that you hear in the song.
Take a few minutes to write down how you would show one or more of these themes through movement.
(Play any song without words. I used M83’s Another Wave From You)
Now get together as a group and each person share briefly their main themes of the song. It is okay to have thought of something completely differently than others did. By the end of the conversation, have the group decide on one theme to focus on. Take 5 minutes to do this.
(After five minutes) Now, everyone take a minute to think of a personal experience that you have with this theme in your own life. Don’t think of anything too personal that you wouldn’t feel comfortable sharing with your group. (Give them a minute to think about this.) Now with your group, tell your stories.
As a group, choose one story to work with. Once you have decided on a story, take the next 20 minutes to create a 30 second scene based off that story. If there are not enough characters in the scene for everyone to have a character, think about how you can include background people to create scene pictures.
Step 4: Have students begin to develop their story and explore how to portray it with just their imagination and movement.