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Students will take everything they’ve learned and put together a mystery play cycle.

Students will add to their commedia character by exploring Lazzi, practiced and predetermined comic bits.

Students will take everything they’ve learned and put together a commedia troupe, create a commedia character complete with lazzi, and present a scene based on one of the three main commedia themes.

Decide how students will demonstrate their knowledge of the unit. A variety of activities are provided. You can choose to have all your students do the same activity, or allow students to choose how they demonstrate their knowledge. Rubrics are provided for each activity.

Decide how students will demonstrate their knowledge of the unit. A variety of activities are provided. You can choose to have all your students do the same activity, or allow students to choose how they demonstrate their knowledge. Rubrics are provided for each activity.

Decide how students will demonstrate their knowledge of the unit. A variety of activities are provided. You can choose to have all your students do the same activity, or allow students to choose how they demonstrate their knowledge. Rubrics are provided for each activity.

In this lesson, students will be introduced to the turmoil of the 18th century. Theatre was extremely curtailed by censorship in this era. They will complete a research project on the sociopolitical and cultural background of the era to set the stage for a lesson on censorship in the 18th century.

Decide how students will demonstrate their knowledge of the unit. A variety of activities are provided. You can choose to have all your students do the same activity, or allow students to choose how they demonstrate their knowledge. Rubrics are provided for each activity.

Playwrights leave hints and tips in the text as signposts for character building. But how do you find those hints? How do you use them to develop a character? In this lesson plan, students will examine scenes from my plays, identify character development clues, and apply those clues. The included teaching script will show you those character clues so you know what students are looking for. The Scenes are included in the plan as well as a reflection rubric. The analysis areas are: facts and concrete assumptions, sentence structure, and strong forms need strong characters.

Students will practice speaking in front of their peers as they explore personification and emotion in a monologue. After seeing a model exercise, Students choose an object and an emotion as the base for their monologue. Students play the part of the object and decide on a story that explains why they feel their current emotion. Students demonstrate stage presence, vocal presence and creating a relevant story.

Students create a character and maintain that character throughout an activity. Students create an original character by filling out a form. These characters participate in a speed date round. Female characters sit in an outer circle of chairs. Male characters rotate clockwise through an inner circle of chairs.The characters introduce themselves and talk for one minute before moving on to the next meeting. Teacher pairs students up and in their pairs student plans and present a short improv: The First Date.

Students will understand the importance of raising the stakes in their performance through their objective and tactics. Students will also understand how their choice of tactics, and their intensity, creates emotional shaping in their performance. Students explore tactics choices, obstacles and emotional shaping while playing the “Candy Bar Game.” Students have an objective to get a chocolate bar, but have a variety of obstacles in their way to do so. They have to choose tactics to help them get their objective and explore the emotions that come as they get closer and closer to the goal. An excellent activity to show students exactly what it means to have an objective, to employ a tactic and the emotions attached to doing so.

To demonstrate how modern character development exercises apply to Shakespearean characters. Students apply exercises to a character from Shakespeare by examining at the character’s foreground and background, answering character questions, and creating the character’s physicality. This will demystify the process of preparing a Shakespearean monologue and give students the tools they need to prepare a monologue on their own.

Students will understand how tactics are active and how to use them to achieve their character’s objective. Students consider the tactics they use to get what they want in their everyday lives and then demonstrate how to use various tactics for an assigned objective by playing “Tactic Fairies.” Two students act out a scene, while their "fairies" make them change their tactic 4 or 5 times to get what they want. This instills that a character can't just repeat the same tactic over and over again, or try one tactic and stop. The consequence of certain tactics is also introduced.

Students will learn the details a stage manager must be aware of as well as how to communicate those details in a clear and productive way. Students analyze a work of art to find the visual details required for that “production” and create an organized list to communicate those details. Students then apply those skills to a written script as the stage manager.

For students to learn, demonstrate, and appreciate the use of positive and negative space onstage as they work towards constructing their own Tableaux. Students learn the concept of Positive Space (the space occupied by a performer) and Negative Space (the unoccupied space). They explore the use of positive and negative space when creating a collaborative image on stage.

Use this lesson plan as an introduction to a playwriting unit. This is a two lesson plan unit. Students complete exercises that demystify and reframe the four foundational elements of the playwriting process: Warm Ups, The Idea, Character, and Conflict. These plans are grounded in the statement: “You can’t build a house without a good foundation.” In order to write plays students need to know the basics first.

To create and experience an experimental piece of drama that demonstrates the power of juxtaposition through music and interpretation. Students choose a piece of music that has a definite emotional “feel” to it. Students create a scene entirely in mime that interprets an opposing feeling.

Students will identify the elements of a good monologue through analysis and evaluation, focusing on a need to speak (Why does the character speak?), a specific character voice (Who is the character?) and a journey (Is there a beginning, middle, end?).

Students will discuss and participate in exercises that apply subtext in a conversation. The assignment for the lesson is a one minute scene - two people at a restaurant, preparing to order. Each pair chooses one of the provided subtexts to play in the scene. Their job is to present the scene so that the subtext is clear. Includes two assessment rubrics.