8th Grade Performing Arts: Essential Questions of Unit 1

Saturday, September 27, 2008

Essential Questions of Unit 1

We are working on these essential questions to explore the many possibilities of spoken word performance: What makes a 1st person story so effective? What is our story? How can memory and guided sense experience help us find words for our stories? How do movement and gesture help tell the story? What can our voices do? How do vocal range and tonal quality enhance meaning and clarity?

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Bio for Branigan LaCount

My name is Branigan LaCount and I am the performing arts student intern at the PHA middle school. I am very excited to be back at PHA after graduating from the school in 2005.
I am currently in my senior year at Emerson College in Boston. I am a BA Theatre Education major with a performance emphasis and upon graduation will receive my MA teaching license. I have been involved in theatre for as long as I can remember and have been teaching drama related classes since my sophomore year of high school. I've acted in over 40 different productions, both musicals and straight plays, and have performed in three different countries. Theatre and education are very important to me so I am very excited to be able to combine them in my work as a student teacher at PHA!
Outside of PHA, I am involved in several other areas: Currently, am working toward my goal of founding a children's theatre organization that specializes in working with mentally and/or physically challenged children, by developing a program that meets these goals. My aim is to have the program up and running within the next two years. I am also a drama teacher with the Boston Children's Theatre, working with 4-11 year age group, and I am manager at Coldstone Creamery, where I train new employees, make ice cream, and decorate cakes.

I look forward to a great semester at PHA!

UNIT 3 Dramatic Reading

8th graders are using skills from improv to create characters and endow them with specific emotional states and personality traits.
We are using the play, 12 Angry Jurors, which has 12 distinctly different characters to use to explore and practice these skills as well expanding the work we did with vocal technique.
"12 Angry Men" focuses on a jury's deliberations in a capital murder case. A 12-man jury is sent to begin deliberations in the first-degree murder trial of an 18-year-old Latino accused in the stabbing death of his father, where a guilty verdict means an automatic death sentence. The case appears to be open-and-shut: The defendant has a weak alibi; a knife he claimed to have lost is found at the murder scene; and several witnesses either heard screaming, saw the killing or the boy fleeing the scene. Eleven of the jurors immediately vote guilty; only Juror No. 8, casts a not guilty vote. A staged and costumed reading wil be the culminating project.

Improv - vocabulary

Accepting - Improvisors need to create a reality that is not really there, without knowing what other reality the other players have in mind. In order to clearly show one united reality, improvisors should be accepting. That is they must listen carefully, play, react, and build every idea they hear or see from each other.
Blocking - not accepting other players` offers - contradicting and destroying what fellow players do or say.
Canceling - destroying what has been established. Try to use all elements that have been introduced by fellow players and realize that contradiction isn't interesting.
Offers – any action or dialog that gives an idea to fellow impoviser and will advance a scene. Usually a good thing. Offers are supposed to be accepted. A strong offer is an offer that clearly gives a direction into which a scene might evolve. An Open Offer is an offer that leaves a lot of possible directions for the scene to evolve in.
Players - students, actors, and people who are engaged in improvising. Schools, groups, actors,theater companies and even companies form "teams" and play together using improv to create scenes, theater pieces and play games.
Scene - a scene is a short-short “story” or exploration about one idea or theme through action and words made up by the players with suggestions from the audience or using an existing story or idea. A scene has a beginning ,middle and end and a who, what, when, where and how.
Wimping – wimping is accepting offers but not doing anything with them. Typical wimping is asking an open Question and leaving the action to be decided by the other player. Another common form of wimping is babbling without making any offer.

Unit 2 Improv

Improvisational theater or "improv" is a form of theater in which the actors use simple games and prompts to perform spontaneously. Improvisers use audience suggestions to guide the performance as they create dialogue, setting, and plot on the spot. These days "improv" techniques are taught in standard acting classes but also are used in corporate settings, college and any place where creative thinking is valued. The basic skills of listening, being clear in thought and speech and confidently intuitive are part of improv study.

Intuition and creativity can be developed. The best way to improve one's improv skills is to practice. Improv is a skill for all walks and ages of life! In the US impov is best known for its comic possibilities. But there is a serious side to improv as well. People who are interested in social change have used improv and theater to help people think and act in ways to change the world. Agosto Boal is perhaps the most famous and his work is carried on here or www.theatreoftheoppressed.org.? Theatre of the Oppressed is a form of public theatre developed by Brazilian director, Augusto Boal, in the early 1970s. This participatory approach to performance provides a platform for dialogue, critical inquiry, and provides tools for individuals and communities to transform their social realities through direct action.
In a forum theatre model, a short skit is presented for a community that addresses a specific oppression faced by members of that community. Audience members are asked to offer alternative solutions and are invited to directly assume the role of the characters, modifying the outcome of the plot by switching roles with the actors. This process is repeated until the actors and the audience come to a consensus over a solution presented.
We will study improv to exercise our positive thinking and to improve our public speaking and acting skills. We will use games and scenes - comedy and drama and we will create it all. Improv is fun, deep and a skill for life!

Story Water by Rumi 13th century Persian poet

A story is like water
that you heat for your bath.
It takes messages between the fire
and your skin.

It lets them meet,
and it cleans you!

Very few can sit down
in the middle of the fire itself
like a salamander or Abraham.

We need intermediaries.
A feeling of fullness comes,
but usually it takes some bread to bring it.

Beauty surrounds us,
but usually we need to be walking
in a garden to know it.

The body itself is a screen
to shield and partially reveal
the light that's blazing inside your presence.

Water, stories, the body,
all the things we do, are mediums
that hide and show what's hidden.

Study them,
and enjoy this being washed
with a secret we sometimes know,

and then not.

8th Grade Performing Arts

Saturday, September 27, 2008

Essential Questions of Unit 1

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Branigan LaCount

Bio for Branigan LaCount

Unit 4 Shakespeare and Theater of the Oppressed

UNIT 3 Dramatic Reading

Improv - vocabulary

Unit 2 Improv

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Children's theater

PHA grad, Branigan LaCount teaches acting to children at Boston Children's Theater

LISTEN

“We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.” - Epictetus (Greek philosopher associated with the Stoics, AD 55-c.135)

Unit 1 Storytelling

Story Water by Rumi 13th century Persian poet

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