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Music and Costume pieces if appropriate.

None

Space cleared for workshops. Space provided for performance on last day for school or selected audience.

I CAN paraphrase the scenes from a story that we have dramatized.

I CAN collaborate with my peers in creating a dramatization of a story or scenes from a story.

I CAN improvise responses to the narrator's reading of a scene from a story both non-verbally and verbally.

DAY ONE: Students will be involved in exercises in improvisation for the stage and will be guided through the process of responding to short passages and/or highlights from a story chosen from their reading list including THE BOY WHO HARNESSED THE WIND by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer, THE HOPE CHEST by Karen Schwabach, and ESPERANZA RISING by Pam Munoz Ryan. In small groups, students will improvise non-verbally and verbally based on the narrative from text used as a catalyst for dramatization. Students will also review the elements found in literature as well as in plays such as Character, Setting, Plot, Conflict, and Theme.


DAY TWO: Students will learn some key theatre terminology that will help them learn how to stay in character, listen to fellow actors onstage, and be seen and heard by an audience. Students will also learn about character motivation in literature and in theatre, and the class will discuss what the characters want in each of the scenes that have been selected and what obstacles keep certain characters from getting what they want. Actors will be cast into different roles in the scenes and will learn about how actors can also play the parts of the wind, the geese flying, or any other non-human role.


DAY THREE: Students will review the sequence of the scenes that are being dramatized and will discuss the rising action, the climax of the story, and the falling action and resolution that are contained in the story. Students will rehearse the scenes with teaching artist as narrator. Again, emphasis will be on staying in character, understanding key theatre terminology that is being taught, and applying that terminology to the work they are doing onstage.


DAY FOUR: Teaching artist and teachers will reinforce the theme found in the story, what the characters want and what obstacles characters face in the scenes being dramatized. Students will improvise their scenes based on the narrative read by teaching artist, and the class will run through the show.


DAY FIVE: Students will share their presentation with an invited audience. Teaching artist and teacher will engage the audience in a discussion about the story following the performance and bring attention to the differences found in reading a story and in seeing scenes dramatized from a story.