Students will demonstrate their understanding of basic color theory and the effects on the audience of color on stage by completing a color wheel, identifying emotional connotations/communication of color on stage and creating a basic color scheme for the play The Rainmaker.
**while these lessons were constructed around this script, any script students are familiar with can be substituted for it**
Curriculum Placement:
This unit would come towards the beginning of an intermediate tech class, sandwiched between unit on script analysis, which focused on The Rainmaker, so the students are already familiar with it, and the beginning of the study of design.
Prior Student Experience:
Students must have taken the beginning tech class to enroll in the intermediate tech class. In the beginning tech class, they would have learned the basics of construction and functions of the different equipment, instruments and jobs in technical theatre. I do not expect students to have much formal experience with color theory, although I suspect some of the connections between emotion and color will be something they have had plenty of real-life experience with, without giving it a formal name.
Class Level:
Intermediate Technical Theatre
Class Length:
60 minutes
National Standards:
Standard #3: Designing/producing by conceptualizing and realizing artistic interpretations for formal and informal productions.
Standard #5: Researching by finding information to support classroom dramatization.
Standard #7: Analyzing, critiquing and constructing meaning from informal and formal theatre, film, television and electronic media productions.
Main Concepts:
color wheel, color theory, color and emotion/messages on stage.
Educational Objective: Students will demonstrate their understanding of basic color theory by completing and explaining a twelve-step color wheel.
Assessments: Students can be assessed from group discussions, participation in games focused on the color wheel, completion of a color wheel and their written or oral explanation of that color wheel.
Educational Objective: Students will demonstrate their understanding of the effects color on stage has on an audience by comparing/analyzing color examples from film and stage.
Assessments: Students can be assessed from group discussion, written and oral analysis of color on film and stage and completion of color activities.
Educational Objective: Students will demonstrate their understanding of the relationship of color and telling the story of a play by creating and defending a basic color scheme for the play The Rainmaker.
Assessments: Students can be assessed through group discussions, activities based on The Rainmaker, creation of the color scheme for the play and their oral or written defense of that color scheme.
