Sample Lesson Plan: “My Last Duchess”.
Picture exercise
Objectives:
To stimulate the imagination and enhance students’ ability to discover character traits through studying photographs, portraits, period paintings, sculpture, and architecture of the period. To stimulate students’ observational skills and attention to detail.
Materials:
Books of art reproductions, specifically Italian Renaissance, and Pre-Raphaelite images of Renaissance subjects. R.J. Berman’s
Browning’s Duke
with its portrait of Lucrezia de’Medici and Alfonso d’Este, Duke of Ferrara. Photographs and paintings of Robert Browning.
Description:
Each student picks a portrait to examine, and individually begins to recreate the character in the portrait. This exploration is done by recreating muscularly the pose of the person in the portrait.
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1. A student should hold the picture within view of the actor, so that the actor can continually observe the picture while recreating it.
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2. Once the actor feels satisfied with the recreation, the class will than look at the picture and the actor to see how well the recreation has been accomplished. Classmates may observe some specific differences and help the actor to make physical corrections.
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3. Class will pick a painting with more than one person in the painting. A group of students will go through the same process as above, then freeze in a tableau.
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4. Students will break from the tableau and improvise the situation that they believe the painting and the characters in the painting suggest.
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5. Students will select a picture that suggests a character from the monologue list for plays. After recreating the picture, students will rehearse their monologues.
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6. As the actors create other characters, they will improvise as those characters in the presence of the Duke. Perhaps the Duke gives a party and the guests include Hamlet, Liubov Andreyevna, Grandma, etc. How do these characters relate to each other?
Final rehearsal:
With costume pieces and objects, the students will rehearse their monologues. The final rehearsal should have as many performance values as possible.
