Unit(s): Oral Interpretation
Purpose:
To introduce body exercises to develop student's concentration and observation skills
Objective:
To enhance student's awareness of the body in oral interpretation through concentration and observation
Materials:
None
Procedure:
1. Review notes on Body Exercises in Concentration.
The problem-solving technique gives mutual objective focus to teacher and student. In its simplest terms it is giving problems to solve problems. . . . Since there is no right or wrong way to solve a problem, and since the answer to every problem is prefigured in the problem itself (and must be to be a true problem), continuous work on and the solving of these problems opens everyone to their own source and power. How a student solves a problem is personal to him, and, as in a game, he can run, shout climb or turn somersaults as long a she stays with the problem. All distortions of character and personality slowly fade away, for true self-identity is far more exciting that the falseness of withdrawal, egocentricity, exhibitionism. . . .
. . . The Point of Concentration (POC) releases group power and individual genius. Through Point of Concentration, theater, the most complicated of art forms can be taught to the young, the newcomers, the old, to plumbers, schoolteachers, physicists, and housewives. It frees them all to enter into an exciting creative adventure. . . . This singleness of focus on a moving point used in slowing the problem-whether it be the very first session. . . or later-fress the student for spontaneous action and provides the vehicle for an organic rather than cerebral experience. It makes perceiving rather than preconception possible and acts as a springboard into the intuitive.
. . . The Point of Concentration acts as an additional boundary (rules of the game) within which the player must work and within which constant crises must be met. Just as the jazz musician creates a personal discipline by staying with the beat while playing with other musicians, so the control in the focus provides the theme and unblocks the student to act upon each crises as it arrives.
Note: Watch for excessive activity in early sessions of workshop; discourage all performing, all cleverness. Students with previous training, natural leadership, or special talent will often ignore the POC just as the fearful one will resist it. Keep everyone's attention focused on the problem at all times. This discipline will bring the timid ones to fuller awareness and channel the freer ones toward greater personal development.
2. Explain the following Mirror Exercise:
- 2 players (a group of pairs can do this exercise simultaneously).
- A faces B (in a group, identify A's and B's in each pair). A is the mirror, and B initiates all movement.
- A reflects all B's activities and facial expressions (it's best to begin with abstract movements, at a slow pace to prevent clowning by B and anticipation by A).
- After a time, reverse the roles with B playing the mirror and A initiating the movement.
Point of Concentration: Exact mirror reflections of the initiators movements, from head to foot.
Side-coaching by teacher: Follow the movements exactly! keep your action exact! Be a mirror.
Observations:
In A: body alertness, accuracy of observation, ability to stay with B and not make assumptions; e.g., If B takes a familiar activity like putting on makeup, does A anticipate and therefore, assume the next action, or does A stay with B?
In B: inventiveness, exhibitionism, humor (does he "fool" and try to trick A by altering actions? variation (does he change movement rhythms?)
Have student use this exercise without telling their audience which of the two is the mirror. This effort to confound the audience demands a heightened concentration and produces a more intense involvement with the problem and each other. This is an early stop in breaking down walls between actor and actor, and actor and audience.
3. Explain the Tug of War exercise in concentration:
- 2 players (a good variation is to use 2 teams of 3 each).
- The players must play tug-of-war with an imaginary rope. The 'rope' is the object between them (Lay out through pantomime or physical gesture where you've laid the rope on the floor, describe what kind it is, it's texture, size, etc).
Point-of-Concentration: to give the imaginary rope reality.
Side-coaching by teacher: Feel the rope! Feel its texture! Its thickness! Make it real!
Observations:
Body action should come out of the rope's reality. If full concentration is put on the object between the players, they will use as much energy as they would use if pulling an actual rope.
This exercise shows both actors and audience that-as in a game-almost all the problems they will work on can be solved only through interaction with another player. No player can do the exercise alone.
It also points up the need to give the object reality for the interaction to take place. . . . Your players should leave this exercise with all the physical effects of having actually played tug-of-war. . . . if not . . . then you may be sure that your players were pretending.
(It's helpful to break down the moves getting started. Give verbal cues, "Pick up the rope. Hold it in your hands. Feel the rope." Then have the teams put the rope down and start again. This helps eliminate the tendency to present or perform what picking it up should look like, etc. In other words, the teacher shows her willingness to go slowly, take time, get into the situation, the exercise isn't designed to entertain anyone, etc. When teams are believable in picking up the rope, call "Pull!" to start the tug-of-war. Continue giving the verbal cues about feeling the rope, etc. Call "Freeze!" to halt action, allowing students to sense their postures, effort, etc., and the audience to clarify their observations. Repeat "Pull!" to start action again. If needed, ask teams to drop the rope and express some observations, even ask the audience response about which team seems to be "winning," and then begin the process again. Others will likely want to volunteer for this exercise, because genuine concentration, once it starts, is fascinating to watch and fun to engage in.)
(A good variation, especially for girls, is to team Jump Rope. Follow the same principles.)
4. Review notes on observation.
For students of oral interpretation, as for acting students, it is important to sharpen the skill of observation in order to develop kinship with the physical life of characters to be "communicated or portrayed. Beyond expressing aspects of health, age, internal moods and attitudes, physical states of being can also influence those characteristics. Jogging in place or other exercises can create vigor as well as the appearance of an active person, for example. If the interpreters do not choose to fully act physical movements in their performances, doing so in early rehearsal preparations (as recommended by scholar Wallace Bacon) will give their final performances sensory awareness and depth lacking by those who try to imagine all movement from purely mental understanding.
While many adolescents enjoy experimenting with role-playing, including changes in dress and appearance, many are still self-conscious when asked to stand before others and perform in a physical way; for some, even using small gestures seems difficult before an audience. the following exercise offers a group game which allows students to sensitize themselves to their own movements and body postures and to experiment in a subtle way with "trying on" postures of others around them which they observe.
5. Exercise Body Design in space: Modeling Shapes
- Warm-up body parts
6. Class join hands in a circle. Teacher asks for a leader to
suggest two movements that we can do with the head; the
class repeats the leader's movements in the same phrasing,
tempo, and characteristic style in which it was created.
Teacher asks for other volunteers for movements of other
body parts such as: shoulders, arms hands, back, ribcage,
hops, legs, feet.
7. Identify possible locomotor movements and stationary shapes
and sample some examples:
locomotor movements shapes
walking high, medium, low levels
skipping narrow and wide
rolling round and straight
sliding stretching and contracting
jumping upside down and right side up
turning one-legged shape in balance
- Defining shapes and locomotor movements with our bodies
8. Shapes - fore each verbal cue, students assume a physical
position
- Lets all find a sitting down shape, one that's most comfortable; now, find a standing up shape that you like; finally, find a lying down shape.
- Put your chosen shapes together in a sequence; begin to feel the flow; instructor calls out cues and varies the tempo as she chooses: Take your lying down posture; stand; return to your seated shape; lie down; sit; stand; lie down, etc. An interesting effect is to number the group--1, 2, 3's and give different commands to different numbers, then the group "dance" is mixed, with some always standing, some seated, some lying down.
- Observe the postures of those around you in the lying down position. The instructor then picks one student and asks everyone to borrow that shape, to mirror the posture as closely as possible. She continues asking all to assume different shapes at each level by observing the student she names.
9. Locomotor movement
10. Improvisations can be made with this exercise, using changes
of mood, setting, or rhythm
following a percussion instrument.