A Midsummer Night’s Dream Cutting.Lesson 7<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
HOOK:<\/h5>\n
Have the class arranged like a professional audition situation with you (the director) sitting behind a table and the students\u2019 chairs facing a performing space. Using copies of scene cuttings that you chose from the scripts the student directors chose, call students up in pairs to cold-read the cutting. Depending on the size of your class, you can either have all of the students perform a cold reading or you may just have a few pairs perform.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
STEP 1:<\/h5>\n
Transition \u2013 Talk with the class about how they felt in the mock audition. What could you, the director, do to make the audition more \u201cactor friendly\u201d? How can you conduct the auditions so that the actor feels like he\/she is given a fair shot? How do you calm nervous actors down so they can show off their best selves?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
STEP 2:<\/h5>\n
Instruction \u2013 Go over the casting points discussed in pages 118-125 of Directing Plays. Be sure that you have previously reviewed the material and will only focus on what you believe your students need in their particular situation as student directors:
\u2022 What to look for in auditions
\u2022 Audition material
\u2022 The place
\u2022 The process
\u2022 The actor \u201cusing\u201d the director
\u2022 The director\u2019s notes and symbols
\u2022 Audition nerves and forgetting lines
\u2022 The director\u2019s reaction
\u2022 Callbacks
\u2022 Special skills, special problems
\u2022 Choosing<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
STEP 3:<\/h5>\n
Discussion \u2013 Along with auditions, have the students share additional ideas of working with actors. Chapter ten in the textbook and pages 59-66 in Ball\u2019s book will give you and your students plenty of ideas to work off of. Encourage them that one of the most important ways for directors to work with actors is to help them in developing their character and objectives.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
STEP 4:<\/h5>\n
Instruction \u2013 Explain to the students what a \u201cbeat\u201d in a play is: a unit of conflict. See the textbook on pages 71-77 for guidance in demonstrating how to determine a beat. The following are ideas to look for to change beats:
\u2022 A change in subject
\u2022 A change in who is leading the scene
\u2022 Somebody enters or somebody leaves
\u2022 Someone finishes with one problem and takes up another
Once the beat is determined then the director can work with his\/her actors on creating objectives for the characters in the beat. You may need to review objectives and tactics with your students or you can refer them to pages 77-79\u2026although be sure to tell your students that Vaughn uses the term \u201cintentions\u201d which equals objectives and \u201cadjustments\u201d which is the same as tactics.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
STEP 5:<\/h5>\n
Guided Practice \u2013 Hand each student a copy of the attached scene cutting from A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream. Read through the scene out loud together as a class. Then have the students individually divide the scene into beats and create an objective for Demetrius and Helena for each beat.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Call on four students to act as Demetrius and Helena and two students to be the director. Have them leave the classroom to rehearse their two scenes for ten minutes. While they are gone, create with the rest of the class a generic audition form that could be used for the student produced night-of-one-acts. You may need to guide the students to come up with some of the following information to include on the form, and you should be sure that the audition form fits what your school feels is appropriate:
\u2022 Name
\u2022 Contact information: address, phone, cell, and email
\u2022 Grade point average
\u2022 Prior acting experience
\u2022 Technical theatre abilities
\u2022 Special skills and abilities<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
STEP 6:<\/h5>\n
Modeling \u2013 Have the directors and actors come back to the classroom and perform their two scenes. Discuss with the class the differences between the two scenes. Ask the directors what they did to work with their actors. Show the class how the same script and lines can be totally different depending on how the script is divided into beats and character objectives are developed.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
STEP 7:<\/h5>\n
Individual Practice \u2013 Assign students to analyze their script and divide it into beats. Have them work on their Character Analysis requirement as outlined for their Director\u2019s Book. Give them the remainder of the time to work on their Director\u2019s Books.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Remind students that their Director\u2019s Books are due next class period. They should be prepared to present their books in five minutes to the rest of class by sharing the following requirements from their books:
\u2022 presenting the poster design
\u2022 summarizing the plot structure of the play
\u2022 conveying the concept
\u2022 exhibiting a mood picture (lighting)
\u2022 playing a section of theme music<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
ASSESSMENT:<\/h5>\n
Students can be assessed through their Midsummer analysis and participation in the mock auditions and directing exercise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVE: Students will demonstrate their ability to audition by participating in a cold-reading mock audition. Students will also demonstrate their ability to mark action beats by scoring their script. MATERIALS NEEDED: Directing Plays textbook, audition cuttings chosen by you from the scripts the students have chosen, copies of the scene cutting from\u00a0A Midsummer …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":7,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tedb-old.byu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1489"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tedb-old.byu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tedb-old.byu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tedb-old.byu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tedb-old.byu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1489"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/tedb-old.byu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3420,"href":"https:\/\/tedb-old.byu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1489\/revisions\/3420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tedb-old.byu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tedb-old.byu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tedb-old.byu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}