What if Pandora wasn’t the villain after all? Pandora’s Fire takes Ancient Greek choral storytelling and gives it a bold modern twist - with curiosity, chaos, and ultimately, hope. Perfect for student performers!
Vocal and Physical Performance Exercises
The exercises listed below can be adapted to distance and online learning opportunities. Students work individually (rather than with partners or in groups).
Group work and discussions can be completed using video conferencing programs (such as Google Hangouts, Skype, or Zoom).
Written work can be submitted electronically via email or uploading to Google Drive or similar.
Performances can be done live via video conferencing programs, or filmed on a smartphone or digital camera and uploaded to a service such as YouTube or Vimeo (privacy settings can be adjusted to accommodate your school’s internet safety policies).
Vocal Exercises
Vocal exercises can be done together via video conferencing programs (such as Skype, Zoom, or Google Hangouts), or filmed on a smartphone and submitted to the teacher.
1. A Simple Breath Control Exercise for Actors & Singers
2. Can You Hear Me Now? A Peer-Led Volume Exercise
Students should focus not only on volume, but also diction and enunciation
3. Create a Vocal Workout for the Articulators
5. 5 Tongue-Twister Exercises for Ensemble Building
For a written project, have students write their own tongue twisters. Have them answer the question: “How does using tongue twisters help them to become actors?”
6. 10 Rounds for Your Next Warm Up
Physical Performance Exercises
Students can practice physical exercises from their own homes using a video conferencing program and following along with the teacher’s prompts, while teachers can observe students’ participation on their own screen.
1. Bound, Punch, Float: Physicality Exercise
2. Character Development Game: What’s For Breakfast
3. Create a Commedia Dell’Arte Character
Focus on “The Lazzi of the Sandwich”
4. Creating Your Own Commedia Lazzi
Focus on “The Lazzi of Surprise”
5. Developing Your Character’s Physicality from Head to Toe
6. Exploring Different Voices Using Puppets, Masks, and Props
“Props” is the easiest of the exercises to complete via distance learning. However, students could create puppets at home using socks or paper bags, and masks could also be made at home using paper.
7. High Status / Low Status Character Physicality
8. Stage Vs. Screen: A Comparison of Acting Techniques
9. Thinking of Your Character as an Animal
10. 3 Fitness Tips for Drama Students
11. 5 Tips for Physicalizing a Non-Human Character
Related Articles
Create Your Own Choice Board: Drama Activities
by Lindsay Price
Choice boards give students the opportunity to choose how they want to learn a particular subject. Create Your Own Choice Boards: Drama Activities can help encourage your students' independence by allowing them to take an active role in their learning.
Distance Learning
by Christian Kiley
A play about trying to survive and thrive in a virtual classroom.
