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CURRICULUM GUIDE Cambridge Public School Drama Collaborative • CPS • Department of Drama and Dance Unit Title: Animal Farm-Anatomy of a Revolution  Theater Games for the Classroom Act Like An Animal Pass a Gesture Pass a Phrase The Counting Game Vocal Warm-up Guide: Articulation Creating Drama Improvisations From Stories Acting Out Scenes Act Like An Animal The teacher initiates a discussion of how some people have traits we ordinarily associate with animals (nervous like a squirrel, cocky like a rooster, etc) and how the animal characters in Animal Farm have some very human traits as well. Part I In a circle, give the students a line to work with, such as "Hello, how are you?" or "I didn't do it!" Have them speak the line with the expression of various animals: a haughty peacock an angry hen nervous mouse sleepy cat hungry wolf slow turtle eager puppy etc. Change the animal personna every five students or so. Part II Have the students choose one animal from the novel. Make a circle out of chairs and have the students sit down. This exercise is done in complete silence. The teacher/leader asks a series of questions designed to help students imagine that they are becoming their animal: Imagine you are changing into your animal&emdash;how would you change? Do you have hooves, webbed feet, or paws? Try to imagine what that must feel like; pretend you no longer have human feet, but the feet of your animal. What about your legs? Do you have two or four? Imagine what it would feel like to have four legs. Are you covered in fur? feathers? Do you have a beak or a snout? How would that make breathing different for you? How is your posture different? The expression on your face? etc. Let students take their time "becoming" their animal characters. Some may shift and change posture to feel more like their animal. When it seems they've accomplished a change, ask half the students to freeze. The other half can have a look around at their fellow classmates. Then reverse, so everyone has a chance to see the new personas. Pass a Gesture (To improve observation skills and focus) Students stand in a circle in "actor's neutral" (with their hands at their sides, feet about shoulder's distance apart). Leader initiates a gesture, any movement at all. The person to her/his left imitates the movement, not changing it. Each student in turn imitates the original movement until it comes back to the leader. The point is to duplicate exactly what you see, not to add your personality or expression. The exercise is to build a group, not a collection of individual personalities. If the gesture is changed or amended in any way, the leader stops the game and starts over. Pass a Phrase (to improve expression, diction and volume) Students stand in a circle in "actor's neutral." Leader says a phrase, with expression. The person to her/his left says the same phrase, but with a different emphasis. Each student in turn gives the phrase a different emphasis/style until it comes back to the leader. The point here is to see how many different ways the same set of words can be expressed. To go further, add a gesture to the phrase and pass both around the circle. To encourage shy students, make the phrase an insult from the Shakespearean Insult Sheet; students love to do this! The Counting Game (to improve focus, sense of group) Students stand in a circle, as above. The idea of the game is to count as high as possible, but no two people may talk at once. The leader simply says the word, "one." Without talking, gesturing or making eye contact, another member of the group says "two." See how high your students can count without two of them saying the same number. Often, students will try to figure out a system of who goes first, second, etc. Try to discourage this&emdash;having a system is not the point. The point is to listen carefully and sense what will happen next. It is unusual to get beyond ten with a beginning group. However, students improve at this game the more often they do it. Creating Drama Improvisations From Stories Make a list of the people, places and events in the story. Divide your list into three columns: who, what and where. Enter the items on your list into the columns. It should look like this: Who What Where 1. Napolean 11. bale of hay 21. Farmer's kitchen 2. A chicken, etc. 12. commandments, etc. 22. slops pile, etc. (It doesn't matter if the words make sense together, in fact, they should not) Divide students into small groups of 3-4 and ask each group to pick three numbers. Read the who/what/wheres for each number to them (and only to them). Give students five minutes to invent a scene based on the three elements given to them, WITHOUT mentioning them by name in the skit. At the end of the improvisation, have the rest of the class try and guess the who/what/where. Discuss the scene to help students develop a critical eye about what works and what doesn't in drama. Acting Out Scenes SECRET SCENES: Some scenes in a novel may be implied. Some are not central to the action, but help the reader understand the character and plot of the story. Brainstorm a list of scenes that are NOT in the novel, but could be. Give each group of students a "secret scene" to improvise. GREAT MOMENTS: Make a list of moments that seem important in the novel. Your students can help you brainstorm this. Use any of the following techniques to dramatize the scenes: Still Photographs Participants create a photograph using their own bodies to represent characters in a moment from the story. Moments can be linked together to create a sequence of events. Sound Track Using their voices, the class creates a sound track to go with the moment being dramatized. What are they thinking? Each character in the tableaux, one by one, says their thought(s) outloud. Most effective when used with Still Photographs.   Hot Seating the Character Once students have chosen a character to research, you can play this drama game with the whole class. Ask for a volunteer to come up "on stage." The student, in the role of his or her character begins by sitting in a chair (hence the expression "hot seating"), and should concentrate on exploring the character's physicality, demeanor, etc. while being interviewed. The rest of the class may ask questions of the character. These questions can be prepared ahead of time with the class, or be left to the spur of the moment. This interview process will often give a teacher insight into the depth and breadth of student understanding and involvement with the novel.