Acting

Acting Tools

The tools below can be used to help get your students in the acting mindset. As we tackle Shakespeare it is so important to get kids up and moving. Empowering them as actors, not just students, gives them the ability to engage with the text in a new and important way.

Acting Activities:

Strut your Status

• Discuss Status and give definition. Discuss cliches and stereotypes so they can be avoided.

• Walking in the space, getting a feeling for your surroundings, don’t look at the floor, look around you, understand the space. No talking

• 1-Low, 10-High. Assign status to the group as a whole, split class, ask them to pick, etc.

1-2-3

Groups of 2 each person take turns saying 1-2-3 and repeating until a mistake is made. When you get it wrong turn to an invisible audience and bow.

• • changes 

    •  1 to a clap 

    • 2 to a raspberry

    • 3 to a shimmy

• Class wide competition, sit when you mess up.

Tableaus

• Taking lines and story from parts of R & J create one tableau that tells the story and say the line, as each group finishes, give them another section of the plot and do the same thing. 

• Start with the beginning feud, dividing the class in half, giving them Capulets and Montagues, explaining that they hate each other, having students get into that feeling. Then have people step forward to play the characters. Giving them the lines to say.

  • Talk about the feelings and emotions of the characters within the scene and what is being seen.

• Then each group in number order acts out their tableau and their line.

  • Discussing what is happening after each group, talking about the feelings and emotions of each character as well as performer and audience. Don’t get to the end, leave them hanging and wanting more.

Yes/No

• Only word being said, using different inflection and emotions

• Yes/No: No words being said only physical action

• Yes/No: Because…

Paper Tapping

• Have students read a dialogue with a partner

• Have students pick a word or two from each line and underline/highlight that word

• When the reread with their partner, they should be hitting or flicking the paper to emphasize the selected words while also hitting them with an emphasis on their voice

• Have students perform the dialogue with no hitting, just emphasis.

Power Grab

• Red light, green light

• "Flag" to be captured

• Someone in power is the guard

  • Example: This is your grandma, she has a jar of cookies, your goal is to steal a cookie. If she turns around, you have to look sweet and innocent or she can send you back.

• Winner gets prize and power

Zip, Zap Boink

• Passing a clap with energy and focus, to change the direction of the clap jump shimmy and put arms up. Adding rules. To send clap across the circle R & J style, Point and say villain, send clap saying draw, do you bite your thumb at me, and rat-catcher

Acting Animals

• can you embody the characteristics of an animal

  • weasel, lion, snake, frog, scorpion, etc.

• Changes the way students read and carry themselves

  • Example: Can you read that Macbeth line as a lion?

Did You Just Say?

• Students will read a line and their partner responds by picking a line or two and saying "did you just say..."

• Partner responds "Yes, line."

Parrot

• Students will read a line

• Their partner will respond by staring their line with a word from the line prior

  • "Do you bite your thumb at me, sir?"

  • "At you, sir? No sir."

Audience Acknowledgement

• Reading the lines and inserting a different person's name in each line

  • helps with audience engagement and acknowledgement, leaning into Shakespeare's goal and The Globe's method

Conscious Alley

• divide students into two separate groups. 

  • group 1 will identify words that strengthen the speaker's message/plans

  • group 2 will identify words that weaken the speaker's message/plans

• Students will line up on opposing sides of a line, the speaker will walk down the aisle and the sides will take turns speaking the words they identified at the speaker

• students will then parrot the words as the speaker reads the speech

Motion Picture Monologue

• cut up a monologue and give students strips

• ask them to pick 4 words from each line to present to their group and see if they can put them in order

  • add a physical motion

  • narrow it down to one word/motion

• read the monologue and have them do their action when you get to their word

Movement Reading

• Ask students to follow the structure of a hit of the script reading, making a movement once a line.

  • tap

  • flick

  • scratch

  • press

  • scrunch

  • hit on leg

  • hug

Eyes Up, Eyes Down

• standing shoulder to shoulder

• eyes up and down in sync, if eye contact is made, students must do something and sit

  • eye contact, "villian!", sit

  • eye contact, death scene, sit

Bippity Boppity Boo

• helps students immediately act

• bippity boppity boo- students must try to say boo before the facilitator

• boo- silence

• toaster- students make toaster and bread

• witch- three witches

• bond- James Bond and the bond girls

Wolf and Sheep

• there is one wolf on the outside

• everyone else circles up and holds hands

• one person is the sheep, it is everyones job to protect the sheep from being tagged by the wolf

Hypotic Hand Trick

• One student is the leader, the other is pretending to be hypnotized

• The leader is having their partner follow their hand

• This can build into other commands

• Explores power dynamic

Subtext Character

• One partner reads a character's lines while their partner does some subtextual movements to impart meaning

  • free vs. bound

  • light vs. heavy

  • quick vs. sustained

  • direct vs. indirect

• Students observing can select which of the feelings they believe the actor to be portraying and what that subtext might tell us

• Sonnets: students can identify the binary they believe works. They can also act out based on quatrain/couplet to represent the line.