Sample Lesson Plans
The lesson plans that follow are examples of how individual classes are organized to introduce specific techniques of character development to students within the context of specific monologues. Some early classes will consist of several shorter exercises of different techniques applied together to the same character so that students see how each element contributes to the whole. Characters for these classes will be drawn from dramatic monologues and soliloquies already familiar or accessible to the students, including those listed later. Because these are all taken from existing plays, each such character will be seen in relation to the whole play as well as within the monologue. The way in which the monologue contributes to the play will also be studied. Later we will return to this topic as students consider how our selected monologue poems might have contributed to hypothetical plays.
Each of several techniques will be applied intensively in separate classes for each monologue, as shown in the sample lesson plans that follow. The development of each character will be a composite which includes elements of separate exercises applied to the same monologue.
