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This session introduces students to the Elizabethan Era, and its’ key playwrights and players.

This is a simple project. Your students are going to tell a joke or riddle to the class. The reason to use a joke or a riddle (rather than a poem, prose piece, monologue, or scene) is 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. See the add-on if you wish to have students apply projection and articulation to a scene.

Students continue exploring nonverbal communication through tableaux.

The final project for this unit is a simple two-person pantomime of up to one minute in length. The objective is for students 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 will learn the Rashomon plot device, then put it into practice through improvised character monologues.

What tools do students need to properly prepare a scene? What exercises? This multi-class lesson plan models and practices those tools and exercises with the full class before they have to take on a scene for assessment.

In this lesson, students will create a script draft that includes scene setting, expression, and movement notes.

Students will participate in a number of power activities that will encourage them to come up with ways to physically demonstrate a powerful/powerless character. A discussion about power in our society will follow.

Theatre is about communication. A story is presented to an audience. Storytelling was one of the earliest forms of entertainment that we continue to use today. Even though the method for delivering the story has changed, the form itself has stayed the same for thousands of years. In this lesson, students will create their version of the 21st century story. What stories do we tell today? How do we tell them? Who do we tell them to? You can use this lesson as an intro to studying modern theatre, especially for students who don’t have a theatre background. You can also use this lesson as an intro for Ancient Greek Theatre. Start by examining stories in a modern context, then shift to the Ancient Greek era.

In this lesson, students will create their own solo performance piece called “I Am From” and explore the different ways to tell a story through self-expression. This allows students to think about who they are and how they can communicate themselves theatrically. In African theatre, there are many ways to tell a story; this poem template allows the student to answer specific questions that will transform into a solo monologue which will be used for a performance.

In this lesson, students learn to identify characters with an archetype. They participate in various exercises to help them understand that archetypes all move and speak differently. Students will explore the statement “movement brings meaning to our life.” Use this lesson to explore character movement, types of character movement, and applying character movement to their own work.

Students will choose a character and become that character (physically and vocally). They will then collaborate with other characters in the classroom to create and perform an improvised scene. Students explore known characters, characters based on traits, and non-human characters both physically and vocally before choosing their own. Lesson also explores the principle of "Yes...And."

Use this lesson plan as a response activity connected to a play that you are studying in class. After reading the play, students will exhibit their ability to analyze a specific character from a play by creating a visual character profile.

Students begin their exploration by learning about the who’s who in theatre and are introduced to the front of house role.

This lesson introduces students to the various roles in the theatre and how they make up a hierarchy. Students take on the role of one of these three important roles in a theatre production through an activity.

Instead of presenting a lecture on influential acting teachers, students self-learn in this lesson plan. Have students research an acting teacher, prepare a presentation and teach an exercise in groups.

This is a completely optional day as it requires a material (liquid latex) that you wouldn’t normally have on hand. It gives you an opportunity to show students another facet of stage makeup, opening the door for ideas and projects that students can do within this mini unit. It also creates a great “buy- in” for students who have been reticent to the process thus far.

Sometimes it’s less intimidating for students to approach Shakespeare’s language with a goal in mind. In this exercise students are given a line from a Shakespeare play out of context and asked to create a scene using three tableaux that tell a story. By approaching the language with an active goal in mind, students delve deeper into the language’s meaning and take control of the story.

Students discuss and apply the different ways one can communicate through gesture.

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.