Week I, Day 1
Goal
To introduce the process of applying problem solving steps to a story in order to produce a play.
Objective 1
Play a theater game.
Strategies
Using the games Give and Take Warmup and Rhythmic Movement, described by Spolin in the
Teacher’s Handbook
, students will experience theatrical action without props.
Objective 2
Review problem solving steps.
Strategies
Have students volunteer the six steps of the Problem Solving course they studied in sixth grade.
Objective 3
Apply problem solving steps to a story.
Strategies
Students or teacher will select stories to be acted. The teacher will assign students to teams of five. Teams will discuss stories according to problem solving steps. Teams will develop tentative scripts to be presented to the class. The class will watch each group’s production and will observe which steps of the problem solving technique were in the story, and whether the protagonist used them. The teacher will provide a simple checklist for students to use for observation.
Teacher preparation
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1. Obtain Viola Spolin’s
Theater Games for the Classroom: A Teacher’s Handbook
and become acquainted with the Give and Take Warmup and Rhythmic Movement.
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2. Review Problem Solving. Obtain a stop light poster from a sixth grade problem solving teacher.
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3. Decide how stories to be enacted will be chosen. Groups may use the same or different stories. Fairy tales, movies, or a story read aloud to the class are some options. Aesop’s Fables may provide tales which are short and active.
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4. Provide a checklist for the observers.
Week V, Day 2
(Day 1 will have included discussion of the action in this scene.)
Goal
To explore how various characters may have felt at the time of the mutiny, and how that may have affected their actions.
Objective 1
Students will play a theater game to facilitate working in pairs and expressing feeling through movement.
Strategies
Students will play Mirror Games from Spolin’s
Teacher’s Handbook
.
Objective 2
In pairs students will discuss how their individual characters felt in this scene, and whether their action reflects that.
Strategies
There are ten central characters in this scene as well as 50 other Africans. How students are assigned will depend on the size of the class. Ideally, I envision twenty students, making two complete casts. Of course that will not happen. Alternatives are triple casting, or deleting or adding Africans. The characters are:.
Ship’s crew: Captain Ferrer
____
Sailor 1
____
Sailor 2
Slaves to Captain Ferrer: Celestino (cook)
____
Antonio
Cuban Slavers: José Ruiz (bought 49 slaves)
____
Pedro Montés (bought 4 slave children)
Africans: Cinqué
____
Grabeau
____
Burnah
____
additional cast 3 girls, 1 boy
____
46 men
Students are to work together to discover the feelings and actions of their characters, first as pairs, such as two Cinqués, two Antonios, and so on. After preliminary exploration they will switch partners and work in groups, with two sets of ship’s crew, two sets of Africans, etc. Finally, complete casts will combine and work on the scene as a whole, keeping in mind the language barrier between the Africans and the rest of the characters. The class should end with a preliminary run-through by each cast.
Week IX, Day 5
Goal
To perform the final scene of the Amistad Affair.
Objective 1
Students will warm up with Part of the Whole: Object theater games from Spolin.
Strategies
Have the class form a large circle and Play Ball with an invisible ball. When all have become part of the game, the teacher will call out “freeze”. S/he will instruct students that when they move again they will be a Circus. Without talking each student will take on the role of a component of a circus. Students may coordinate acts, but without speaking. After some minutes, the teacher may call out “freeze” and switch the scene, perhaps to a restaurant.
Objective 2
Students will rehearse and then perform Scene eight: The Law at Work.
Strategies
The class will have developed scripts and staging during the week. Suggestions may be found in the text of this paper, Week 9, Scene 8. The dramatic effect of the scene will be increased if the judges have podiums, gavels, and robes. The cast (or casts) may have a preliminary rehearsal and then act the final scene. The play ends with the Africans’ departure for Sierra Leone. In Week 3 the class may have acted the walls of the ship, TeCcoro. They may wish to act the walls of the homeward bound ship, the Gentleman, in a similar way, but with an affect opposite that of the previous slave ship.