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Theatre Arts Curriculum

 

Students attending Simmons Middle School may participate in drama class during the day in the following ways:

 

  • 6th Grade: via the exploratory track in a 9 week rotation

    • Emphasizes movement, vocalization, and creating a character

    • General theater appreciation

  • 7th Grade: via the exploratory track in a 9 week rotation with an option of an additional 9 weeks with teacher approval

    • Beginning stage craft

    • Emphasizes basic stage blocking

    • Expounds upon knowledge from 6th grade

    • Culminates in small play

  • 8th Grade: via the exploratory track in a semester long class with an option of an additional semester with teacher approval

    • Stage Craft and Design

    • Utilizes projects and teamwork

    • Expounds on previous knowledge from earlier grades

    • Culiminated in a final design project and a performance piece for the student body

    • Option to attend and compete in the State Thespian Festival

Basic Movement and Acting Technique

Students will:

  • Identify the basic elements of theatrical training, including vocalization, kinesthetic, and emotional and intellectual processing.

  • Demonstrate ways an actor controls voice through pitch, rate, volume, pronunciation

  • Develop characters through various postures, gestures, and facial expressions

  • Identify basic stage directions

  • Use high, medium, and low spatial levels to enhance the effectiveness of a scene

  • Demonstrating a variety of actor positions or profiles

  • Demonstrate rehearsal techniques: pacing, polishing, and vocal/physical encoding

  • Use appropriate vocabulary: blocking, character, scene, empathy, aesthetics, and enunciation

  • Describe theatrical experiences using vocabulary: genre, style, acting values, themes, designs.

  • Explain legal and ethical ramifications of using another's work in a production

  • Critique theatre productions to determine the effectiveness of verbal and nonverbal interpretation, director's intent, audience response, and technical elements.

Set, costume, and lighting design; play design and process

Students will:

  • Develop a director's notebook

  • Plan a rehearsal schedule

  • Create a scene matrix

  • Design a microphone and lighting plot

  • Identify ways that a play can represent the time periods in which they are set (ex. Costuming)

  • Identify basic components of staging a production, including set design, blocking, costumes, lighting, and sound.

  • Select/design/create sets, props, costumes, lighting, and sounds to support the school play

  • Analyzing the technical parts of our theatre facility and its functions: flats, platforms, backdrops, cyclorama, and drapery, to determine their roles in effectively staging a production

  • Determine the functions of technical theatre roles that scenery, props, lighting, sound, costumes, and makeup play in creating the environment for a play

  • Identify and take part in the roles of different members of the production staff

Characterization and analysis:

Students will:

  • Describe the acting process, including memorizing, determining, and enacting character objectives and motives; listening; and maintaining concentration.

    • perform a monologue or dialogue

    • Use improvisation to discover character and motivation

    • Demonstrate understanding of text, subtext, and context through improvisation

    • Identify the structural elements of plot in a script or production

  • Explain emotional responses to the whole as well as to the parts of a dramatic performance.

  •  Demonstrate use of the body and voice as creative instruments.

  • Demonstrating spontaneity through improvisation exercises

  • Demonstrating how improvised dialog and scenes can be used to tell stories and develop characters based on a variety of sources

  • Performing pantomimes or improvisations using voice, blocking, and gesturing to depict characters and tell a story

  • Analyze scripts, including dialogue, action, and expository information, to explain and justify character motivation.

    • Interpreting metaphors, themes, and moods in scripts

    • Adapting student-written scenes for dramatic media

  • Create characters, situations, and events based on personal experience, literature, historic events, or research to introduce tension and suspense in a theatrical production.

  • Demonstrate an understanding of characterization and scene work through a group performance.

  • Analyzing a scene from a play read in class to adequately portray a character or action

  • Demonstrating understanding of subtext and emotion through vocal and physical work

  • Demonstrating a relationship to other characters in a scene through interaction with and reaction to other characters in the scene

  • Memorizing a scene

  • Performing a scene accurately, including actions designed during the rehearsal process

 

Stage Craft

Students will:

  • Develop a director's notebook

  • Plan a rehearsal schedule

  • Create a scene matrix

  • Design a microphone and lighting plot

  • Identify ways a play can represent the time periods in which they are set (ex. Costuming)

  • Identify basic components of staging a production, including set design, blocking, costumes, lighting, and sound.

  • Select/design/create sets, props, costumes, lighting, and sounds to support the school play

  • Analyzing the technical parts of our theatre facility and its functions: flats, platforms, backdrops, cyclorama, and drapery, to determine roles in effectively staging a production

  • Determine the functions of technical theatre roles that scenery, props, lighting, sound, costumes, and makeup play in creating the environment for a play

  • Identify and take part in the roles of different members of the production staff

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