Objective: Students will demonstrate their understanding of viewpoints and other movement techniques by applying a specific movement to their characters.
Hook: Watch the clip from Miss Congeniality about gliding. This is just to get them back into the “walking” mode. Remind them that we learned about walks last time by the following entry:
Journal Entry about walking last time. Have students pull out their journals and begin it as, “I went on a walk the other day…” They need to write observations of what they discovered about their character based off of last class and how their research helped them. This is just to get them thinking about previous learnings from last class.
Step 1: Review walks from last time. Ask them to walk around the space and refocus back into that character you were last time.
Step 2: Talk about actions that you do every day.
Get ready in the morning
Eat food
Take a shower
Have students imagine in their heads on an average morning. What are some things you do every day?
Now think about how your character goes about their every day. Close your eyes, don’t answer this question, just think about it. What is an action that they do every day in their schedule?
We need to discover these things today to help us create the perfect movement. Remember I want your characters to become your best friends.
Step 3: Introduce Anne Bogart’s Viewpoints. Talk about how this is one method to develop your character movement. Through a very brief introduction to Anne Bogart’s Viewpoints we will be creating personal movements for our historical characters today. The first one is:
Shape
The first thing we want to figure out is what is the general character shape that your character fills. How do they fill the space in a room?
Like a cylinder with liquid in it, how do you fill the space in this room as if you are the liquid?
Read this definition from Anne Bogart’s Viewpoints:
Shape – The contour or outline of bodies in space; the shape of the body by itself, in relation to other bodies, or in relation to architecture; think of lines, curves, angles, arches all stationary or in motion.
Activity:
Create a shape of your character as if we are in a wax museum. Let one half of the class look at the room and observe the other statues in the room.
Step 4: Time- the next Viewpoint we will discuss today:
Explain that there are different things that fall under “time” according to Anne Bogart:
Tempo, duration, and repetition
Explain that we are going to focus on duration. Why?
Because for our final assessment you will need to be your characters for the full 30 minutes of the assessment.
Step 5: Space- specifically location in this situation: (space) the location of something changes the way you move.
Explain that you are going to call out a specific location and you want them to move how you would move in those locations.
High School Prom
At the beach
In an office as office workers
Old folks home
How did your bodies change to fit the place or feeling? What does this do to your movement?
Step 6: Lastly, we are going to discuss Story
give your character a story to move to
Think in your mind an action they do often. Taylor Swift plays in concerts often and has a guitar. Bethany Hamilton surfs and prepares her surfboard. Amelia Earhart checks her plane. pantomime an action you do every day. Let the class explore and create this movement thinking about shape, time, space, and now story. After exploring and creating this, have six go up at a time to show the class as their characters performing this “story” that they do every day. Ask for observations on different and unique movements.
Assessment: Write three things you learned about your character’s movement in relation to Anne Bogart’s viewpoints in your journal and show them to someone by you before you go.
Stand in a circle and have every person say something that they learned about how their character moves.
