Movement & Physicality

By this point, students will have learned about and practiced miming preparatory skills (including stillness, focus, and visualization), portraying items of different weights, and interacting with...

We’ve all seen the classic “mime stuck behind an invisible wall” routine, and when you mention miming to students, typically they’ll immediately start waving their hands around in that fashion....

In our previous Middle School Miming article, students explored using their hands and arms to maneuver invisible objects of various sizes around a circle. Now, we’re adding moving throughout the...

Students new to mime will often just start moving their hands haphazardly, like an item magically appeared in their hand out of thin air. But one of the ways a mimed object is made “real” is by...

Miming is a great topic for middle school drama students. The art of miming uses the actors’ bodies and imaginations to tell a story, without using their voices. It’s all about “making the unreal,...

It’s common for young or beginning drama students to get wiggly or fidgety onstage, especially if they’re part of the ensemble or not speaking, singing, or dancing at that moment. It’s as though...

Make no mistake: Drama class is not for the faint of heart. Creating theatre is physically and mentally strenuous and drama students need to be strong. Performing onstage and working backstage are...

Do you want your students to show you MORE onstage during a heightened emotional scene? “Joshua, can you be more sad here?” “Sannah, I think your character needs to be more angry right now.” “Lise,...

If you want your students to physicalize their characters, get them thinking about status. What is status?Answer this question for yourself. Write down a couple of different answers yourself, then...

“Body language accounts for 60% of our understanding of emotions, our reception of subliminal messages and our grasp of relationships.” - Ron Cameron-Lewis, Acting Skills for Life Student actors...

A character’s physicality is part of the actor’s toolkit. Physicality, along with voice and imagination, helps to tell a story, no matter if you’re doing a mime, tableau, monologue, or scene. The...

If you want your students to take their character development to the next level, introduce them to Laban Movement. Laban will provide students with a clear and understandable tool set that will...

This is a followup of yesterday’s post on Theatre in the Round. Yesterday I talked about staging, today I’m going to take about the unique challenges and benefits to acting in the round. Movement...