Search the Drama Teacher Academy

Students are introduced to Guideline 5 “Relax, Have fun, and Don’t Force the Humor” and apply their knowledge through warm-up and improv exercises.

The final project will allow students to demonstrate their improv skills in a two-person scene.

Students are introduced to the concept of gesture in pantomime and apply it in a nonverbal exercise.

Students are introduced to the concept of specific detail in pantomime and apply it in nonverbal exercises.

Students are introduced to the concept of specific detail in pantomime and apply it in nonverbal exercises.

The final project for this unit is a simple one-person pantomime. The objective is for them to utilize mime, body language, and facial expression to tell a basic story (an activity that has an obstacle that they overcome or get past).

Students are introduced to the concept of what makes a good voice and how to achieve it through breathing and proper posture.

Students explore resonance and the resonators.

Students explore articulation and the articulators.

This is a simple project. Your students are going to tell a joke to the class. The reason to use a joke or a riddle (rather than a poem, prose piece, monologue, or scene) is that students in the audience will want to hear the answer. They will be more engaged in the simple joke or riddle than passively listening to something else.

In this lesson students will have the opportunity to explore and discuss ideas and concepts related to gender in plays, to try making casting decisions themselves, and to consider how gender can affect how an actor portrays a character and is perceived by an audience member. Can they look beyond the male/female binary and be thoughtful and inclusive in their casting choices?

To introduce Theatre of the Absurd, students will look at photos from Europe after World War II to inform the reflection monologues they will write later. First, they will discuss an assigned photo in groups. Next, they will create group tableaux and write personal reflection monologues.

Students will explore one of the four background/historical elements for Theatre of the Absurd. Within their groups, they will create a way to share their area of exploration with the class. This works best as a multiple-class lesson.

Students will explore using clichés, stereotypes, and overused phrases in dialogue as used in Theatre of the Absurd.

Students will be introduced to Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and examine clichés, stereotypes, and overused phrases.

Students will explore the absurdism theatrical convention of using meaningless language to communicate (or not communicate) a larger theme of interpersonal relationships and misunderstandings. Students will create nonsensical scenes using their own text messages.

Students will explore acting the absurd by taking a blank scene and adding specific absurd acting choices.

Students will explore the absurdism theatrical convention of circular plot lines that appear to go nowhere and end in unresolved situations. They will create a conventional and an unconventional (absurdist) plot line using a well-known fairy tale.

Students continue to explore the absurdism theatrical convention of circular plot lines that appear to go nowhere and end in unresolved situations. Students are introduced to The Arsonists by Max Frisch.

Students will demonstrate the absurdist dialogue convention of strange and ill-timed pauses by adding pauses to Lucky’s monologue from Waiting For Godot and either direct or perform with varying pauses in their performance.