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Students will learn and practice pantomime skills by developing, communicating and sustaining the size and shape of mimed objects.

Students will be able to take everything they’ve explored about commedia and create a simple scene.

Students will perform and be evaluated on the contentless scene that they have prepared during the unit.

Students are exposed to research, concepts, and skill sets while they explore costume design and the role of the costume designer. They will be able to demonstrate their knowledge of costume effectiveness.

Students demonstrate comprehension of how to present physical activities through pantomime. The focus of the pantomime is using the five senses, using whole body, and incorporating the principles of maintaining a mimed object.

Learning to deal with rejection and turn rejection into a positive motivator is a lifelong skill. In this multi-class lesson, students will reflect on and discuss their views on rejection, theatricalize that view through movement, research someone who has found success only after rejection and failure, and theatricalize that information.

Students will use sentence starters to set goals and expectations for their time in class. What do they expect to learn? What do they expect from their classmates? What is the purpose of drama class? Have students fill out an expectations and goals form at the beginning of the year and you can use it to compare and contrast their work at the end of the year.

Introduce your students to Uta Hagen and the nine questions she uses for character development.

Students will create a simple pantomime story and prepare a pantomime for performance.

In this lesson, students will decide how best to include movement in their scene to help an audience understand what is happening in the scene. Students will complete a set design for their partner scene and add 3+ blocking notes to their scripts. Students will also take a Stage Directions Mini-Quiz to demonstrate their understanding of stage directions/basic blocking notes.

In this lesson, students will complete four rehearsals of their scenes using Objective and Tactics Rehearsal Checklist, focusing on objective and tactics.

Students will continue to evaluate the role of the critic and the purpose of criticism. In this case study lesson, students will examine the power of the New York Times drama critic in the mid to late 20th century. While there were many outlets reviewing shows, there was an ongoing mythology that a review from the New York Times had the power to keep a show running or close it. Students will discuss and infer if this is true. They will also reflect on the role of the critic who has such power.

Students will demonstrate their understanding of situational movement by performing a scene.

In this lesson, students continue to build the play by writing and revising scenes, reading each other’s work, and providing feedback.

In this lesson, students will finish watching Dreamgirls (if you need additional time) and complete a devising activity based on the film.

Students review context clues and apply it to the Prologue from Romeo and Juliet.

In this lesson, students will rehearse their scenes using a rehearsal checklist, focusing on vocal expression and projection.

This is a great exercise to allow students to create original stories. Students literally make a “human story board” by standing in a line and adding in various elements of a story. The story begins with a beginning, middle, and end and then the students add main ideas and details to round out the entire story.