LESSON FOUR:
The focus of this lesson plan will be on building a character through improvisation, writing character studies, and using exercises from the pervious lesson plans to create verisimilitude.
MATERIALS:
Film: VIVA ZAPATA!; bound copy of the novelette of VIVA ZAPATA!, video equipment, costume pieces such as ponchos, sombreros, mantillas, serapes, etc. The class will need a theatrical makeup kit, books with pictures of the period, and historical information about Zapata, Pancho Villa, and other historical figures of that time.
DESCRIPTION:
-
1. After writing character studies, the actors will recreate Zapata's first appearance with the peasant delegation in Mexico City in 1909 for an audience with President Diaz. The students are especially interested in stage and film makeup. Each student will experiment with character makeup for this scene. (In the film Brando has a two-way stretch inside his mouth, his eyelids glued together at the edges, and plastic rings in his nose.
16
)
-
2. Students will improvise the arrest and rescue of Zapata by the peasants. This scene, as with most scenes in the film, especially lends itself to improvisation. Prints of Diego Rivera will be used as a starting point for improvisations. Students will physically recreate the painting, forming a living picture or tableau vivant. One of their objectives will be to continue to use the physical characteristics found during the recreation of the painting
-
3. The students will learn the dialogue from the novelette and the given circumstances to work on the assassination of Modera. The contrast between the characters of President Modera and his assassin, General Huerta will be explored. In the film, the President is portrayed as a rather quiet, scholarly man, while General Huerta is a large, frightening, cigar smoking villain. The students will decide what exercises they will use to explore character and situation.
-
4. The scene of the ambush and murder of Zapata is another scene that will be worked out through improvisation. Each actor will do an individual exercise based on their decision as to where and what their character is doing before the beginning of the scene. This is an imaginative "day in the life" of the character leading up to "the immediate previous circumstances" before Zapata is murdered.