The High School Acting class learned about different theatrical movements from 1800-2012 this week in preparation of reading “The Caucasian Chalk Circle,” a ‘Epic Theater’ play, by Bertolt Brecht. Here is a link to the Prezi that contains the information they were given on Monday. Theater Movements of the 19th and 20th Centuries
The High School Acting class has been hard at work on learning/memorizing monologues and applying a wide variety of dialects to them. We have a Hamlet with a Boston dialect, a few British sounding students, an Irish fella with a problem at the DMV and another one with some pretty tough memories of a work camp during WWII. I am trying to convince the students to perform these for the Arts Showcase, so families, please encourage your students to step up and share their hard work with the audience on April 27th!
Here are the weekly lesson plans for Acting.
This semester in Acting II students will be diving in and exploring the actor’s toolbox, which consists of their 1.) bodies 2.) voices and 3.) minds. We are beginning with the body. For the next few weeks, the class will engage in movement activities and exercises that challenge them to define environments, observe the motions of animals and humans and interpret and replicate those observations and create characters and silent scenes. This week, the students are developing solo performances of complex actions through pantomime. They are breaking down activities like fishing, bowling or getting ready in the morning into small, performable actions. They began the project on Monday and will perform their solo scenes on Friday.
The Acting I class has Act 5 left to read and they will be finished reading “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” After winter break the class will be split into 2 acting troupes and will be rehearsing and performing scenes from the play. Its neat to see which students relate with certain characters in the play. There are romantics, clowns and nobility and the students have had a interesting time discovering and exploring each type of character. They have been completing comprehension quizzes as we go and have also been performing parts, listening to the audio play version, and viewing the film version. I’m pleased to say that comprehension quizzes are showing that they are ‘getting it,’ and if you ask any of them they will probably tell you that they are ready to perform it!
Yesterday we finished reading, listening to, and viewing Act One of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and the class is excited to put the second scene on it’s feet next week. They completed 2comprehension quizes this week and tackled and conquered many new vocabulary terms. Most of the class was convinced that the play was going to be a tragedy after reading the first scene, but after the second, they seemed to get really excited about the comedy. Here is a link to the MND 4 plots grid assignment that will be an ongoing assignment that helps the students track the 4 separate plots in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
We are ready to begin reading and studying “A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream” by William Shakespeare. Since Shakespeare’s text can be pretty intimidating, especially when reading it for the first time, we will be taking our time and doing it right, with a wide variety of approaches and methods of instruction. Here are three “wordles” I made that shows you what some of the most frequently used words in Act1Scene1 are. A “wordle” shows us the frequency of words through their size… the bigger the word, the more often it appears. I like this method as an introduction to an unfamiliar text because it gives the students a starting point for predictions about what might be in the text.
This week in Acting One, the students were taken on a fast and furious journey from Ancient Greece (500BCE) to the Italian Renaissance (1500). They completed a timeline project in which they recorded some of the major events in theater of these 2,000 years.
The class is beginnning their study of William Shakespeare and his world, in preparation for their upcoming study of his play, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” They read a brief excerpt from a theater history text on his life and watched 2 short videos about his birthplace as well as his famous theater, “The Globe.” Students completed comment and question cards in response to these. Next week they will digging deeper into the the life of Shakespeare, Elizabethan England. Students will be taking quiz at the end of the week to demonstrate their learning.
The Acting I students will be creating news casts set in Ancient Greece. The details of the project are below:
Ancient Greek Newscast
Directions: With your partner, you are to research this part of Ancient Greek Theater and create news report about it.
Objective: Your job, as a reporter, is to teach the rest of the class about your assigned part of Ancient Greek Theater. Make sure that you include interesting facts, visuals and interviews in your report.
Your group’s topic is:(each pair will be assigned one topic)
- Why did the Ancient Greeks perform theater? Who were they performing for? Include explinations of the Festival of Dionysis.
- The archeticture of Ancient Greek Theaters. With visuals that show the different parts of the theater and descriptions of their uses.
- 3 types of Ancient Greek plays. With clear descriptions and examples of each.
- Ancient Greek Playwrights (with extant plays- 3 tragic and 1 comedic.) Who were they and what did they write? What were they like?
- The structure of a Greek play. Also, the performer’s, playwright’s, and audience’s roles in performance.
Assessment:
You will be assessed on the following critera:
Research: You must look up and use a minimum of 3 sources (5 for an ‘A’). Make sure to include the major parts of your findings in your newscast.
Script: You will write a script that involves 2-3 newscasters. Be creative about your characters, location, interviews and (most importantly), get the important information across in a clear way.
Performance: Practice your newscast with your partner at least 3 times. Stop when something isn’t clear or could use more detail and add to your script.
Use the following guidelines/steps for preparing and performing your newscast:
- After the first practice ask: Were all of the points we made explained clearly? Was there any confusing parts?
- Correct any unclear or confusing parts of your script and finalize it.
- Rehearse your script again, trying to look up and at the audience as much as possible. If you need to make cue-cards for yourself, so that you can look up as much as possible, do it now. (We don’t see real newscasters looking down at their notes- neither should you!)
- Make cue-cards and rehearse at least 2 times with them. If you don’t make cue-cards, rehearse your lines 4 times.
- Perform for the camera. (Yes, we will be filming these!)
- Review your performance on tape and reflect.
*Remember- I am a teacher/thespian who highly values process over product. This means that I want to see that you have carefully considered and worked on your newscast more than I want a ‘prime-time-ready’ newscast. I will mostly be looking for solid research, clear script writing and presentations of your material. Oh… and HAVE FUN!!!
You will visit the following websites for information about your topic.
Perseus Encyclopedia (definitions of unknown vocabulary):
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0004&redirect=true
Interactive map of an Ancient Greek Theater:
http://interactives.mped.org/view_interactive.aspx?id=773&title=
Introduction to Greek Stagecraft:
http://www.didaskalia.net/studyarea/greekstagecraft.html
Ancient Greek Theater History “The Glory that was Greece”
http://www.watson.org/~leigh/drama.html
Very general Ancient Greek Theater info:
http://novaonline.nvcc.edu/eli/spd130et/ancientgreek.htm#dra
Ancient Greek Theater- (another pretty general site)
http://www.ancientgreece.com/s/Theatre/
PowerPoint presentations about Ancient Greek Theater:
http://greece.mrdonn.org/powerpoints-theatre.html
Theaterhistory.com- a good resource for definitions and descriptions, but takes time to sort through info.
http://www.theatrehistory.com/ancient/greek.html
*Ms. Prill’s collection of theater texts! You may find these much more clear and easy to follow.
This week the Acting 1 students have been learning the parts of a stage and how to block a scene. “Blocking” is a theatrical term that simply means planning the movements on the stage. The students are practicing their blocking by directing short “open scenes,” where they determine the location, character relationship, and how to show that through stage movement. “Open Scenes” are short scenes that have very basic lines that are adaptable to almost any situation or character.
