British Columbia (2018)
GRADE 12 - DRAMA - Explore and Create

While the Drama Two Curriculum has a focus on acting, it’s always important to include a unit on the technical theatre skills that are necessary to any production. Students will also be able to use what they’ve learned in this unit in their upcoming devising project. Students will begin by exploring design for the stage by experimenting with line, shape, texture, size, and color. They will expand their understanding of stage properties and scenic flats. They will then apply their knowledge of these building blocks of design to create a high-concept design for a miniature “stage.”

Improv is a fantastic method to engage your students; this 3 lesson mini unit is a great way to introduce improvisation. This unit focuses on learning the rules of Improv, trying games to build improvisation skills, and developing conflict and story line.Through the three lesson series, students will use journals, participate in class discussions, learn six different improv games, and perform for their peers. Assessment tools include both informal assessment as well as a formal quiz that’s included in the unit.

Teacher Angel Borths developed this unit when she was looking for lessons to teach the basics of pantomime in the classroom. This unit culminates in a finished product for performance, either for peers, or for theatre festivals. The rubrics and written work for this unit take planning and preparation for performance into account. The exercises can be pulled out and used independently, but work best when used to build toward a finished product. You can also pull the ground plan and stage directions lesson plans to use with playwriting or directing lessons.

Students will get “onstage.” They will explore what is important for onstage action, the basics of stage directions, and how to keep open. This unit will culminate with students trying out what they’ve learned in a short scene. This unit is more about the technicalities of moving on stage. By giving students something concrete to focus on, it allows them to overcome any stage fright. Ensemble-building exercises are also included in this unit. If you have time at the end of a lesson after you’ve completed your instruction and are wondering what to do, you can never go wrong with an ensemble-building exercise!

In this unit, students will explore nonverbal communication: first, through body language and gesture, and then through the specific art of pantomime. Students will learn hand position, tension, follow-through, and action/reaction/interaction with objects through warm-up games and exercises. The unit culminates in a two-person pantomime performance.

This unit focuses specifically on the technical aspects of vocal production. By understanding how voice is created, students will be more aware of how to improve their vocal production. Students will explore posture and breathing exercises, as well as how to use the diaphragm, projection, and articulation. The final project will test students’ ability to properly project and articulate a joke across a large space.

This unit on Ancient Greek theatre focuses on the function of the chorus, the choral ode, and the details of the theatre space. It touches on plays and playwrights of the era, culminating in a final project of a modern version of Medea that includes a choral ode.

Students sharpen their listening and reaction skills through improv games, exercises, and scenes. They will learn five specific guidelines to apply to their improvisation: accept the offer, bring information to the scene, make active choices, make your partner look good, and don’t force the humour. There are so many different ways to approach a unit on improvisation. Keep in mind that you will have students who are really excited about this unit and some students who dread it. It’s best to start with low-risk games and exercises and then build up to higher-risk ones. Low-risk games in this situation mean partnered interactions that aren’t shared with the whole class.

Students will discover, analyze, and explore the history, characters, and style of commedia dell’arte. Commedia dell’arte is a theatre history unit mixed with improvisation, physicalization, and exploring specific characters. In this unit, we’re going to focus on three main aspects: 1. Causes and Effects of Commedia (History) 2. Stock Characters 3. Commedia Performance Practices

How does an actor analyze a script? Students start with character analysis (how do we learn about a character in a script? what are the facts/inferences about a character?) and then explore the ideas of “objective,” “obstacle,” “stakes,” and “tactics.” The unit culminates with students applying learned script-analysis techniques on an assigned scene.

How do you introduce students to Shakespeare? This unit introduces the Bard through life in Elizabethan England and the playwrights, players, and playhouses. It also explores how to approach unfamiliar words and context clues in Shakespeare’s texts.

Students will explore the structural elements of a play: character, objective, obstacles, tactics, resolution, and raising the stakes. They will also learn how to write character-driven dialogue and stage directions. Students will work in groups to create and present a short play.

This unit will enable students to identify, compare, and contrast three different styles of Japanese theatre: Noh, Bunraku, and Kabuki. There are three proposed projects in this unit: a research assignment where groups delve into further detail about one of the three styles; a performance project where students utilize what they’ve learned by enacting a scene from a Kyogen (comedic) play; and a Bunraku puppet play.

Musical Theatre has two components that separate it from straight plays: song and dance. This unit gives students the opportunity to try out both. In musical theatre, music signifies heightened emotion. We can’t express ourselves with just words, we need music (and through extension, song and dance) to take it further. This unit includes three lesson plans: 1. Acting the Song - “Musical Tactics” 2. Acting the Song - “Textual Analysis” 3. Introduction to Dance A solo performance assignment is also included, and the unit includes assessment tools - rubrics, reflections, and self-evaluations.

This unit on Puppetry is designed for middle school and up, to introduce students to the material and get them comfortable with performing in a safe and low exposure environment. This is a unit that builds to a culminating experience for your students. Each lesson is designed to explore techniques, provide opportunities for creative collaboration among your students, and give them opportunities to perform. Some of the lessons require materials to build or create puppets. Puppetry can be as easy as drawing a face on your finger for finger puppets, to actually purchasing your own finger puppets for students to use. While the focus of this unit is puppetry, your students will explore other skills as well. There’s the obvious ones of creative thinking, teamwork, and problem solving. They are also going to explore storytelling, performing skills, and playwriting.

Help… It’s all Greek to me! Join Angel Borths in this unit that uses a modern adaptation of the Ancient Greek play Antigone to introduce Middle School students to Ancient Greek Theatre. Have your students read Percy Jackson and want to find out more about Ancient Greece? Then, this unit is for you. This unit is designed for middle and high school students and will take you through the basics of classical Greek theatre and pairs it with a modern adaptation of the story of Antigone called Agatha Rex by Lindsay Price. Students will learn vocabulary, design, and basic theory surrounding classical Greek theatre. Students will also enjoy the mask-building component of this unit, as they learn to disappear into the character of a mask, like the first actors did on a Greek stage thousands of years ago. The unit culminates in a scene performance with masks.

In this unit by Anna Porter, students are introduced to the works of Shakespeare and explore how to bring a character to life in a monologue performance. Students are also introduced to the tools to help them unlock meaning in Shakespeare’s text. Through this eleven lesson series, students will participate in class discussions, activities and performance. Assessment tools include informal assessment, submission of textual analysis work and a final performance.

Shakespeare’s text holds valuable tools that students can use to unlock and understand meaning. In this unit by Anna Porter, students explore how to use the tools of research, context, textual analysis, imagery and punctuation to help them unlock meaning in Shakespeare’s text. This unit is created for an Intermediate to Advanced drama class with a basic background in plot structure and acting technique. Through this five lesson series, students will use journals, participate in class discussions, activities and performance to explore the tools used to unlock a text. Assessment tools include informal assessment as well as a final group presentation and performance.

In this unit, students explore how to communicate with their body by exploring elements of physicality and Pantomime. Lesson one helps students explore body awareness as well as the use of the senses and details in pantomime performance. In lesson two, students explore body language and how it is used to communicate by examining the art of flirting. Lesson three helps students create a distinct physical characterization. Lesson four introduces students to the quality of Pantomime – Consistency. In lesson five, students explore the quality of exaggeration in pantomime. In the final lesson, students prepare a pantomime story for performance. Through this six lesson series, students will use journals, participate in class discussions and practice the elements taught by performing for their peers and as a class. Assessment tools include both informal assessment as well as a final Pantomime performance.

The Drama Two Curriculum has been developed to expand and deepen students’ skills as artists. In this unit, students will explore character analysis, which is key to developing three-dimensional characters in monologues, scenes, and plays. In Part 1, they will start with Uta Hagen’s nine questions for character analysis.

In Part 2 of the Monologue Unit (Monologue Project: Analysis, Writing, and Performance), students analyze an existing monologue to determine the criteria for a “good” monologue. They will then apply what they learned in Part 1 (Monologue Writing Made Easy), adding in the criteria for a “good” monologue, to write and perform an original monologue.

In this unit, students are introduced to a series of lesson plans that explore non-traditional approaches to performing the works of William Shakespeare. By the end of the unit students will be exposed to a unique set of tools they can utilize as the foundations for analyzing, staging and performing a scene from Shakespeare’s canon. Students will then rehearse and perform a two-person Shakespearean scene.

Commedia dell’arte is a 16th century masked acting form. It is the basis of all comedy, including all tv sitcoms. This form is characterized by masked types and archetypical characters and a specific way of playing comedy. To that end, this unit is divided into two parts. Part One focuses on the foundations of commedia - playing comedy. These principles will be important to learn when it comes to developing commedia characters, specifically the physicality of the characters. Part Two will cover lazzi. Note: there are links to video demos in many of the lessons of this unit.

The Comedy of Manners is a style of comedy that satirizes the behaviour, actions, fashions, and “manners” of a segment of society. Because it has such specific characteristics – from plot to dialogue, to characterization, to costumes – it’s an excellent era for students to learn and apply. In this unit students are introduced to the style, learn some background, and apply the traits of the comedy of manners. The unit culminates in the creation of a modern scene.

Understanding basic improvisation skills will help musical theatre performers understand that musical theatre is more than just singing and dancing. It’s about using all the tools (voice, body, and mind) an actor has at their disposal to create a character. This unit focuses more on the improv aspect rather than the musical theatre aspects - in fact students need no prior musical theatre knowledge. Annie Dragoo, creator of the unit, uses this material as her first unit in her musical theatre class. It’s a great introduction and will get your students in the right frame of mind to approach musical theatre. The lessons explore a variety of improv skills such as vocal responses, movement, character study, sensory awareness and culminate in an improv scene and unit essay.

Lindsay Price has developed this Introduction to Film Analysis Unit: Mise en scène. In order to develop visual literacy, students have to be able to analyze what they see. In a film, the composition of everything you see on screen is called mise-en-scène. In this unit, students will explore the individual elements that make up mise-en-scène, be able to identify those elements in stills and film scenes, and apply their knowledge in a culminating analysis activity. Heads up. You’re going to need some technology for this unit. Students need to be able to view, either as a class or 1:1 images, a google slide deck and selected film scenes.

In this middle school unit by Rachel Atkins, students will explore how to strengthen a theatrical argument through objectives, communication, and conflict: What characters do, what they say, and how they say it when they make an argument or try to achieve an objective. To do this, students will use tableaux, dialogue, and improv. There are presentations and post-lesson writing assignments that you can use for assessment. How do characters, actors and writers use a variety of actions to achieve an objective or support an argument? How do they enhance their communication by word choice and emotion? How do they develop and strengthen their own arguments by understanding other points of view?

The objective of this unit by John Minigan is to move students from a traditional presentational model of performance to a three-dimensional model. You’re going to achieve this by having students - Develop tactics to achieve character goals, despite obstacles - Connect physical choices to scene structure and relationships - Clarify tactics and story rather than forcing emotion - And focus on the scene partner rather than the self This unit was created to use with grade nine students as a transition from middle school to high school acting approaches. It would also be appropriate for a beginning-of-the-year unit for a program that includes Drama 1. But any class that is at the beginning of their acting process will find value. Each lesson comes with an engagement Rubric to assess how students participated in the activities and discussions.

Want a fun project that has your students collaborating and creating? In this unit by Annie Dragoo, students in groups will write and perform an original musical by adding modern songs to a traditional fairy tale story. The six lessons take students from writing their script, to choreography and planned movement, to rehearsing, performing and evaluation. The Rubric will focus on student performance. That means vocal delivery, emotional delivery, blocking/choreography, energy, focus, and characters.

Instructor Laramie Dean uses this unit as the final project for his Drama 2 students. Drawing upon any of the skills students have developed throughout, they create a product that could be used within a new piece of musical theatre. Students start by analyzing three musicals, study guides included, and practice creating musical elements. They are then given class time to prepare in groups as many elements as they can for a new musical using devised theatre techniques. There are 24 lessons in this unit which culminates in a final assessed performance.

Aristotle was a huge fan of the theatre. He philosophically believed in it and argued with other great thinkers at the time about the necessity and good results of theatrical pursuits. This makes him a great topic for a drama classroom unit. Aristotle identified six elements that needed to be in a play for it to be worthy: plot, thought, character, diction, spectacle, and sound. This unit by Lea Marshall focuses on and offers exercises for each of Aristotle’s elements - from using fairy tales to examine plot, to re-imagining movie trailers to explore music.

Musical theatre performers use their bodies to sing, to dance, and to act. We must think of our bodies as instruments and learn to use our instruments properly in order to be better musical theatre performers. The overall objective with this unit, by Annie Dragoo, is for students to demonstrate an understanding of the use of good movement as it connects to musical theatre. Some of the activities include using action verbs, moving as animals and inanimate characters, nonverbal communication and situational movement. Students will then perform a scene that will allow them to put to practice all the movement techniques they have learned.

Students sharpen their listening and reaction skills through improv games, exercises, and scenes. They will learn five specific guidelines to apply to their improvisation: accept the offer, bring information to the scene, make active choices, make your partner look good, and don’t force the humor.

In this unit, students will explore nonverbal communication. First through body language and gesture, and then through the specific art of pantomime. Students will learn hand position, tension, follow-through, and action/reaction/interaction with objects through warm-up games and exercises. The unit culminates in a one-person pantomime performance.

This unit focuses specifically on the technical aspects of vocal production. By understanding how voice is created, students will be more aware of how to improve their vocal production. Students will explore posture and breathing exercises, as well as how to use the diaphragm, projection, and articulation. The final project will test students’ abilities to properly project and articulate a joke at a distance from a microphone

Every drama program should have a playwriting unit. Playwriting applies creative thinking skills and, through feedback and revision, critical thinking skills. Playwriting also allows students to engage in self-expression. It is a powerful act to take one’s thoughts, give them to a character, and have them said aloud. Playwriting can be a practical task-driven process that any student can accomplish, given the right parameters. This playwriting unit is broken into two parts. This unit is Part 1. Part 1 is a standalone playwriting unit for beginning writers. Students go step by step through the elements of the playwriting process, which culminates in a short scene, monologue, and character profile. All the exercises can be done synchronously in your class sessions or small groups through breakout rooms.

Every drama program should have a playwriting unit. Playwriting applies creative thinking skills and, through feedback and revision, critical thinking skills. Playwriting also allows students to engage in self-expression. It is a powerful act to take one’s thoughts, give them to a character, and have them said aloud. Playwriting can be a practical task-driven process that any student can accomplish, given the right parameters. This playwriting unit is broken into two parts - this unit is Part 2. You can continue the playwriting process from Part 1 by having students apply what they’ve learned through writing a five- to 10-page play. Or, if your students are familiar with the playwriting elements, perhaps they just do Part 2 of this unit. Students will write a first draft, revise, give and receive feedback, and read their work aloud. The unit assumes that either students have completed Part 1 or they already have a grounding in the playwriting form.

Taking risks, learning to see failure as a gift, finding courage when we don't feel it, and having the awareness that what we say has an impact are social and emotional skills students will take beyond the classroom. These are skills that can be built through improv exercises. The exercises in this unit are designed to create a safe environment in which students can go beyond their old patterns to take risks, embrace failure, and be more confident and aware of the effects of their word choices. Improv gives you the opportunity to draw attention to these important concepts and to talk about them.

Perspective taking is the ability to understand a situation from another person’s perspective or point of view: What are they thinking? What are they feeling? How does their background influence their perspective? Perspective taking allows students to develop self-awareness, to recognize differences, to understand an opposing point of view, to assess nonverbal language, and more. In this unit, students will practice perspective taking as they: • Assess their own perspective. • Demonstrate understanding of the perspective of others in specific situations. • Analyze characters in a text.

Students will demonstrate an understanding of the foundations of acting. At the end of the unit, students will be able to understand the value of making rich acting choices on stage. This unit gives students an opportunity to explore and develop acting skills on a more advanced level, regardless of experience. They will explore skills, including voice, movement, emotional recall, memory, playing objectives, and character development culminating in a final scene.

In this unit, students will learn about Antonin Artaud and how his ideas influenced avant-garde theatre in the 20th and 21st centuries. They will also learn how Jerzy Grotowski took Artaud’s theories into new directions. This is done through direct instruction. A culminating presentation will ask students to take common stories and reimagine them using some of these ideas. They will present a “pitch” of an avant-garde version of their story. In the second lesson, students learn about some of the ideas of Augusto Boal and try a session of Forum Theatre.

The Dilemma Project is based on a situation that requires a decision: push a button and get a great reward, but there’s also a great consequence. Don’t push the button and there’s no reward. This unit will lead to a group performance including characters, costumes, set, acting theory, acting tools, and a student written script. The final script will be about ten pages in length which means roughly ten minutes of stage time.

All students have something to say and a story to tell. They can relate to their personal stories better than anyone else. All students have a lot of material which can be used as part of an original monologue. In this unit, students will write an autobiographical monologue based on their personal expertise, memories, distinct point of view, sense of truth, and life experiences. Through the process, students will be encouraged to explore past stories, objects, and images and other personal material.

The goal for this unit is to give students a process to work primarily on their own to create a staged scene with specific, dynamic blocking and three-dimensional characters. This unit would work well as a culminating project for a semester. In this unit, students will work independently to analyze, block, build character, experiment, and rehearse a scene. Their performance can count as a summative assessment for the class. Material: This unit requires that students have access to scenes from plays. Ideally, students should work in pairs and prepare duet scenes.

This unit focuses on having students gain an understanding of basic physical acting and learn some specific tools to use in mask work. Instructor Allison Williams has developed this unit, and explains "What I love most about mask work is how, by having students cover their faces, they are able to find freedom to express themselves physically. They often make bigger choices than we’re normally used to seeing them make in class." In this unit, students will work step by step from identifying shapes in the mask to using those shapes to creating a character zero to learning how to move in the mask utilizing the qualities of movement to applying everything they’ve learned in short scenes. The unit will culminate with students working in pairs to create original mask scenes. You will need masks to complete the unit. And while mask-making can be a lot of fun, it’s a lengthy and messy project. A list is provided in the Overview of where you may be able to buy or rent masks for use in your classroom.

In this unit, students will create a performance of a spoken word poem designed to engage, entertain, and affect an audience. They will also write a poet’s statement in which they describe the purpose(s) or inspiration(s) of their poetry. This is not a technical writing unit and is geared more toward students self-expression and engaging an audience. If your students are not skilled poets, this unit is still accessible.

Shakespeare is sometimes avoided in the drama classroom because not only do the students not want to take on the language difficulties but neither do the teachers. Monologue and scenework becomes more challenging and a lot of times, students falter in their blocking action and character development because they are so challenged. How do we give students the opportunity to rehearse and present Shakespearean text as they would modern text? In this play study unit, students will read a Shakespeare play while learning specific tools and techniques in order to stage text from that play. And more often than not, these techniques are ones that they have already used with other plays. It’s all about reframing Shakespeare so that students enjoy the experience of bringing the characters and stories to life.

This is an advanced acting unit in playing character through the Laban movement technique. Students will explore dance theorist Rudolf Laban’s eight efforts and their component parts; turn these elements into physicalizations through which one can express character; use Laban efforts and connect them to a character’s voice and body; and demonstrate knowledge through the creation of an original character. Reminder: This is an advanced acting unit. You will need students who can do work on their own outside of class time, commit to movement and sound, and commit to making instinctual choices.