Students will demonstrate acting fundamentals (character development, objectives, tactics, motivation, blocking) by creating, rehearsing, and performing a musical theatre mash up scene.
Learning Level Description/Some Context:
Intermediate-ish. This was designed for a high school Intro to Musical Theatre class. Most students in this class have taken drama classes before and hope to audition for the musical and/or the Advanced Musical Theatre class. There are a few exceptions to this, but generally most students are passionate about and enjoy performing. Some of the main goals for this course are to help students amp up their acting abilities, improve their stage presence, and sharpen their ability to sing in styles needed for musical theatre.
Prior Experience:
Prior to this unit, students have done musical theatre duets and a group ensemble number. Students are familiar with and have worked in this class to apply basics of acting, blocking, characterization, but need further opportunities for practice and application.
National Standards:
TH:Pr5.1.I
Practice various acting techniques to expand skills in a rehearsal or drama/theatre performance.
TH:Re9.1.II
Verify how a drama/theatre work communicates for a specific purpose and audience.
TH:Pr4.1.I
Examine how character relationships assist in telling the story of a drama/theatre work.
Shape character choices using given circumstances in a drama/theatre work.
TH:Pr4.1.II.
Discover how unique choices shape believable and sustainable drama/theatre work.
Big Idea:
Scenes are most interesting when an actor’s physical and vocal choices are tied to their character’s objective.
Essential Questions:
Why do both voice and body matter in character development?
How can physical and vocal characterization help an actor best engage an audience?
How can the tools of physical and vocal expression apply outside of theatre?
What qualities make a scene believable?
How do objectives inform an actors physical and vocal choices within a scene?
How can movement help enhance a story?
How can props and business be utilized to enhance a story/character relationships?
Enduring Understandings:
An actor must know the ins and outs of their character if they want the audience to fully engage with them.
Audiences need to know what is being said (lines) and why (objective) in order to be interested and engaged in a performance.
For this to happen, actors need to know how to find and play their character’s objective.
An actor’s goal is to find the most appropriate physical and vocal expressions to meet the audience’s needs.
Frequent, honest self-reflection can help an actor improve future performances.
Lesson Objective: Students will create a new musical theatre scene by researching and selecting a Broadway song to embed in an assigned contemporary scene.
Lesson Objective: Students will create a new musical theatre scene by cutting/adapting their scene and selected song to fit together and beginning memorization.
Lesson Objective: Students will demonstrate their understanding of objectives in acting by identifying their character’s objective, plotting out tactics they use, and performing a short moment for another group.
Lesson Objective: Students will discover character driven movement for their scenes by choosing one prop they will implement into their scenes, creating a basic floor plan of their scene’s set, and writing out blocking for the scene.
Lesson Objective: Students will demonstrate their progress by performing their scene in a preview.
go over rubric, spend 10-15 mins rehearsing scene. OR do mini preview—choose a chunk to perform for us that you want notes on. OR split class into 2-3 groups put them in different rooms/areas of the auditorium if available—will need multiple sound systems or speakers if doing this.
Lesson Objective: Students will sharpen their scenes by setting rehearsal goals and focusing their rehearsal on the areas they received notes on during previews.
NOTE: Depending on the level of students in the class, more guided rehearsal days may be necessary or desired. Feel free to add those in as you see fit! The Supplemental Lesson/Rehearsal Idea page has a list of activities and exercises that could be used to help guide students in their rehearsal.
Lesson Objective: Students will demonstrate acting fundamentals (character development, objectives, tactics, motivation, blocking) by performing a musical theatre mash up scene and writing a critique of the work of their peers.
Lesson Objective: Students will demonstrate acting fundamentals (character development, objectives, tactics, motivation, blocking) by performing a musical theatre mash up scene, writing a critique on the work of their peers, and doing a self-reflection.
