Scene Work: Part 2, Student Self Staging

Students will begin their staging journey by compiling the basics. They will read the scene and identify some general knowledge that will help them play the scene.

When analyzing a script, you want students to do a close reading, multiple times, and mine the text for as much information as possible. It’s important to know who your character is, why they act the way they do, and, most importantly, how you can physicalize all your newfound knowledge. At the end of each read, students identify possible staging ideas for their character and for the plot.

The last script analysis step is scoring. To score a scene means to divide the dialogue into beats and then add action words for each beat. Scoring gives students a roadmap for staging.

Students will take their script analysis work with beats and action words and apply it to their scene. Students will also start to think about how they will have to adapt staging to a virtual environment.

Students will continue working on staging techniques by exploring character physicality.

Students will solidify blocking notation that can be used in a virtual environment.

The sooner students memorize their lines, the more fun they are going to be able to have with the scene. It’s hard to become a character, fully realize blocking, and make the scene one’s own with a script in hand. Acting begins when lines are memorized. This session will focus on practicing a variety of memorization techniques. They will be applied to Section 1 of the scene.

Students will revisit character physicality choices and solidify that they are a part of their staging. Additionally, there are some exercises to further explore character physicality. Encourage students to continue to visualize and practice bringing characters to life as they work on their scene.

Students have been through their scene multiple times with specific blocking choices. They have been working on memorization and character physicality. In their rehearsal today, students will review their blocking choices with a specific objective of making every action in the scene purposeful and theatrical.

The rehearsal period is coming to a close, and it’s almost time to present. In this rehearsal, students will share their scene with another group with the specific focus of examining it for actor-driven movement rather than character-driven movement: shuffling your weight back and forth between your feet, playing with your hair, vaguely gesturing with your hands, etc.

This is it! The final rehearsal before students perform. Students focus on getting those last few lines word perfect, reflect on where they are, and do final run throughs.

Students perform their scene and complete a post-performance reflection.