Students will be able to will be able communicate with their puppets by participating in a puppet charades.
Materials
National Theater Breathinghttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiFGATFzgfU
Mexican Opera https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owgeTMn9XKI
Charade Cards
Brain Dance Outline
Hook Breathing
Puppet Clips
Ask students to gather reasons why breath is important to moving? You can get ideas from what the people say or just what you are seeing?
Show National Theater Clip first, then show Puppet Opera Clip.
Discussion
Ask students to report what they saw and heard about the importance of breathing?
How were the puppeteers actually accomplishing breath in their puppet?
Transition
Explain that we are going to push ourselves today to explore different ways of moving realistically. If we have extra time we can start playing with non-realistic movement.
So before we can know what is realistic movement for our puppet’s body we need to know what is realistic for our bodies.
I will lead you through an exercise called the brain dance.
Activity Brain Dance (Self)
Direct students to find their own personal space in the room.
Put up movement poster.
Define Brain Dance “a series of exercises … comprised of eight developmental movement patterns that healthy human beings naturally move through in the first year of life…”
Breath
Tactile
Core Distal
Head Tail
Upper Lower
Body Side
Cross Lateral
Lead them through the eight patterns of movement, stressing that nobody will or should be quite the same. If they are at a loss for how to move check up on the movement poster for another idea.
Name, Model, Lead students through each Movement Pattern
Discussion
Ask students to compare how they feel now after they have completed the brain dance, compared to before they started the brain dance? Physically or Emotionally? Compare your breathing? Did you were feel limited by your anatomy? Were you ever surprised that you could move a certain way?
Transition
Explain that we will now do the brain dance again with our puppets. Using what we learned about the limits of our movement.
Activity Brain Dance (Puppet)
Repeat Brain Dance Movement Patterns.
Side coach by calling out names on the movement posters.
Remind students of their breath.
Encourage students to go slowly.
Transition
Now we are going to put our exploration of movement to work in a character walk.
Ask students to switch their puppet role from the one they just performed.
Activity Character Walk
Compare this to a standard character walk many of the students have already participated in.
Those who don’t know, your puppets will walk around the room and adjust your movement to the things I call out.
Subjects could be emotions, settings, characters.
You may interact with one another but the purpose is to get a flow of your team’s own way of moving before you try to start connecting with others.
Emotions
Sad
Excited
In Love
Afraid
Angry
Bored
Laughter
Settings
Swamp
Hot Coals
Jello
Moon
Water
Blizzard
Fog
Intense Wind
Hail
Characters
Principle
Old Person
Broken Leg
Princess
Pirate
Ninja
Sumo Wrestler
Music
If students are doing well push them to interpret music from the Bunraku Puppet Walk Playlist.
Transition
Explain that just having good movement isn’t enough in performance. We want our movement to communicate.
Activity Charades
We will now play a game of charades.
Ask each puppet team to write down 3 charades. It can be people, places, phrases, or things.
Mix up the charades and hand on to each puppet team.
They will each have 2 minute to plan out and practice how they will move to communicate their word.
When each group performs, the other teams will be in charge of guessing. Whichever team guesses first gets a point.
Performers can use breath but not words while performing.
Keep track of points.
Activity Journal
Ask students to identify what communicated well in performances and what made the communication difficult between performers and audience?
