The daily lesson plan format for an eighty-minute acting class includes a focus exercise, followed by a brief physical and vocal warm-up. Then the skill or technique lesson is introduced and practiced. Each class concludes with a reflection discussion, and/or a rubric assessment.
This curriculum unit will be taught over the first marking period, a duration of nine weeks. It will be interspersed with their regular lessons, creating a progression of first identifying who they are, and then how they can improve sharing who they are, and accepting their classmates.
The first semester of the Freshman acting class teaches three basic acting techniques. First, the actor trains himself to create believability through focus and concentration. Secondly, the actor learns to consider climate, location, and level of comfortability for a character to establish the script’s environment. Thirdly, the actor learns to endow objects with properties they do not normally have.
Throughout the year, every acting and stage voice class involves an established routine. The curriculum design affords time for an exercise to focus the students’ concentration, an exercise to energize and loosen the body, the day’s lesson and a reflection period at the end of class. If either of the warm-ups (mental and physical) is skipped, the day’s lesson suffers. The students lead such busy lives, and can not easily switch gears to begin acting class.
From the first day of school, I teach a physical warm-up based on the Alexander Technique. It entails a series of stretches to elongate the spine, and move the body’s ball joints. Every movement based on the Alexander Technique requires that the actor maintains constant awareness of their spine, and what direction it is moving. Every stretch, even standing erect, must be done in the context of widening and lengthening the spine.
Diaphragmatic breathing and vocal exercises conclude the physical warm-up. Later in the year, class can begin with the physical warm-up. But early on, the students usually require a simple exercise to bring their focus into the room, and on the work at hand. Exercises, like sending your hearing or vision out of the room, visualizations of flying on magic carpets, creating a ball out of imaginary space substance and then tossing it in the air and catching it, develop the concentration young actors require before they can begin to study or work.
Once they have prepared their focus and released muscular tension, the students can begin to study the day’s lesson. The spectacular thing about theater, in terms of teaching strategies, is that it daily encompasses all of the usual methods of instruction used in outcomes-based education. Direct instruction serves to explain the basic techniques explored and applied in the lesson. The students proceed to work individually, in small groups, or with the whole group. The process of studying theater relies on cooperative learning, as each work piece receives criticism and critique from the whole class. Together and individually, the students explore creative problem solving. They research the clothing, architecture, mannerisms, and customs of different time periods, depending on the dramatic piece being studied. Every day, they research characterization by simply observing the people they see throughout the course of their day.
The fact that the theater classroom is so diverse makes it readily enjoyable to most students. Each learner works in the mode that works best for him or her, during every class. A fundamental difference between my upbringing and today’s teenagers lies in the notion of fun. I was raised in a society based on manufacturing, moving toward technology, and later, service. My students are being raised in a society growing toward leisure. “Fun” for my students is not a happy by-product of learning; it is a required motivation. If an activity is not fun, it should be replaced with something that is. My students believe they are wasting their time, or doing themselves a disservice, by engaging in a project that lacks fun. Thank goodness theater is fun. Every class requires so many different activities that each child can find something they like, and something that challenges them. Exercises, games, and rehearsals keep them moving, stretching their limits and their imaginations.
Oscar Brockett best describes what we are really doing in theater: “Acting is the illumination of human behavior onstage.” Since human behavior relies on communication through both verbal and body language, student actors study both types of language. There are four interrelated processes of verbal language: talking, listening, reading and writing. Every class features exploration of these four processes. The approach to exploring language varies from lesson to lesson, but always seeks to reveal methods of how humans communicate. Students readily study the human senses, enjoying the process of isolating one sense from another. I try to have each lesson appeal to, or include reactions to, as many of the senses as possible. Understanding various reactions to sense stimuli helps the actor to create believable characters.
Each learner receives and delivers information (communicates) differently. According to Howard Gardner’s research on human intelligence, there are four basic learning styles. Gardner describes these styles as visual, aural, tactile and kinesthetic. Almost every acting lesson teaches and tests application of knowledge in all four styles. This is the nature of theater.
To be open to receiving or sharing personal information, actors must learn to dismantle the “mask” they wear. Everyone wears a mask; it is a barrier people use to conceal inhibitions. By finding common ground throughout this unit, my students can leave their mask at the stage door, and put it on again at the end of class when they leave. Ideally, they will take with them new mental directions on when, where, and why they (and their characters onstage) wear a mask.
To be successful in imparting knowledge to my students, I must constantly be aware of my roles as a theater educator. It is rarely, if ever, sufficient for me to give a lecture, and then a written test. In addition to designing and implementing a curriculum, I must be a coach, mediator, cheerleader, facilitator, and assessor. Likewise, the children must learn how to assume these roles for themselves and for each other, to work and grow cooperatively.