This program is part of a series of lesson ideas provided by Gill Chesney-Green from Derbyshire in the UK.  (Thanks a plenty Gill! - Kim Flintoff - Webmaster)
 

An exploration of Physical Theatre - Year 8

Explain that Physical Theatre uses our bodies for our effects rather than using props, scenery or even sound effects at times.

Session 1
Ask the class to get into a standing circle and explain the first activity will be a game to get them into the idea of making movements. Ask the group to remember as many of the following actions as possible. Each person says their name with a movement to accompany it. The group then copy this speaking the name and making the movement. This carries on around the circle. The game starts when one person does the action of their own name and follows with an action of someone else. This person then repeats their own action and follows with someone else’s, and so on. This helps concentration, and also removes some of the barriers to making movements and gestures.

Staying on their feet ask them to move into a space on their own. Explain that you are going to call out letters of the alphabet and they are to form those letters using just their bodies. Capital letters are best.  Start easy and get harder: I, X, T, L, P,K etc. Remind them that the letters have to be read the correct way round and you are their audience!

Now ask them to get into pairs and make the following letters using two people: H, E, F, A, D, K, M, W etc reminding them of their audience!
Obviously some of them will be easier to read than others. 

Now get the pairs to join up into fours and ask them to spell out a message to the group using letter forms. They might want to do this making separate words as a unit, or single letters at a time, like a ticker-tape.  They will show these to the group/class and the class will read them …if they can!

Discuss what this technique could be used for in creating and showing drama. When might it be most effective.?

Session 2
Start off with the Name -movement game again, but this time ask the group to make the movements rather mechanical and machine-like if possible. 
Now ask the group to do a Mexican wave (from a standing position) and to keep this going for a few rounds. Draw their attention to the fact that it is rather like a machine in some ways…ask them to do it again in a more mechanical manner.

Ask the group to think about the  qualities of machines (non-human, repetitive, noisy, etc). Now, in the groups of four that they created last session for their word presentations, ask them to put their movements together in a sequence, to make a sort of machine. Ask them to try and alter the rhythms and speeds of the movements so that they are not all moving in the same way.

Show these to the group. What else do we need to add to the movements? Sound. Ask around the group for each person to make a sound that they feel could represent some part of a machine sound.  Now the groups to get back together and work out how they could put sound with their movement sequences. They are to try and make contrasts in rhythms, tones, loud, soft, high and low, fast and slow, short and long to make the sound of the machine more interesting. 

After the groups each show their machines, ask the class what they think each machine could be making or doing. This should provoke some interesting ideas. 

Ask them to think about machines designed for a purpose eg  biscuit-making or bottling, or even a machine that could move along/around such as a fence erecting machine, or one for digging and filling in holes etc. Their imaginations will probably be working by now!

Session 3
In pairs ask them to make a chair from their bodies. Ask someone to sit on one of the chairs to see if it works! Ask them to make a wardrobe, a revolving door etc. (Anything you can think of really.) 
Explain that quite often in physical theatre, the actors use themselves rather than props or set. What would be the advantage of using no props or set? Think of stage traffic etc.
Ask them to get into groups of about 6-8 and to show a room in a house with items of furniture and someone who will use those items. Show to the group. (There is nearly always a bathroom and  a toilet! - usually boys!) 
Turn your attention to other objects now… a motorbike, (clearly it doesn’t have to move!) a washing machine, a London Underground Escalator (with moving pictures along the side), a clock (analogue), a life support system, a dentist’s chair, etc. Again, their imaginations are the only limit on this. However, they do like the motorbike to try out as a starting point.
Ask them to show their machines/objects to the group who can guess what they are. 

Session 4
Ask them to look back on the work done so far and review what they have done. How effective was the work? 
Get them into a standing circle and to hold hands. Do a variation of the Mexican Wave by holding hands and making the movement as smooth as possible. This is rather organic. Could they make the waves of the sea at the water’s edge involving the whole class? They might try this in lines of four or five. 
This lesson is going to concentrate on organic movements and objects. Seeds growing, flowers opening, making trees (using more than one person, maybe three) and having them blowing in the wind, etc.
Ask them to find a space and to make themselves as small as possible as if they were a seed in the ground. You will count slowly to 10 (or 20) and they are to first put out a shoot, then a stalk then leaves and gradually to grow into a plant. This will take a good deal of control to keep the movements as controlled and smooth as possible. Ask the best ones to demonstrate in the centre of the circle. 
Now, in groups of four or five, they are to find a way to show the same process, but this time they will be able to make the resulting plant/flower more complex. You could possibly use suitable music to accompany this and the eventual showing.
Now, you might like to try this with the whole group, using concentric circles of students unfurling one by one to make a layered plant/flower.
Finally, you could tell the group about a film maker called Busby Berkeley who worked in the thirties and forties, (I think) and how he used a huge cast to create visual effects with them and their bodies, and Esther William’s with her water effects. You could have all the group lying on the floor with their heads in the centre and see what sort of flower could be made using their legs as petals, and one with their feet in the middle with their arms and heads making the movements of the petals.

Session 5 (and 6)
Introduce the poem - ‘Giovanni’. 
Read through poem. What is it about?

Mirror mime work Introduce the group to mirror-mime work. Stress the need to work slowly so that the actions are matched very closely. What does Giovanni do at the river, what were we showing here? He takes off his make-up. Is there a way of showing  the mirror work as if he was looking into the water? Explain what stage make-up is like and how it pulls on the skin when you take it off. What effect does this have on the face? Think about the clown make-up, what expression does it show? How could you show the before and after effect…from smiling to sad?

What could have happened to him before to make him go to the river? Discuss this with the whole group. In groups of 5/6, different groups show different ideas as a series of five still images. 

To get to the river, I want us to make this more interesting….I want to add that he walks through a dark wood. Maybe the trees could seem to snatch at him as he passes, maybe the wind whistling through the branches could whisper his name, maybe they could make him feel they are crowding in on him and are his enemies. In your groups, work out how to show his journey through the wood… don’t make this too quick, however, allow him maybe to feel that the wood is trapping him and that he is lost. 
Activities of the circus - what is mentioned in the poem? What else? 

The group can show these. Which was the most successful at getting the atmosphere of Giovanni’s confusion and sadness?

Refer back to the poem. What other images does the poem suggest to us? The life of the circus. Assign each group of students an element of the circus, parade, tight-rope act with the audience responding, lion tamers, clowns tumbling etc.

(I often tell them about going to Art school when I was younger. We had to draw the model and sometimes the tutor would ask us to draw the body  using only 8 lines…so we had to think about what lines to draw to make the drawing still recognisable at the end.) Afterwards, we are going to show these as a montage, which is like a collage but is a drama term. Think about what you need to show to make your group’s section recognisable. Montage doesn’t have to be freeze frames… it can be moving but apply the same rules as for the drawing, just enough to let the audience know what is happening. 

Now can they put the montage, the mime and the reason for him going to the river together? What order are you going to do this in? Think about the order and why you are doing it that way. Show to the class and give feedback.

Review/test

Giovanni

He walked down to the river and bent over the water
And saw his face contorted by his painted smile.
He leaned over the river and touched the water.
Waves broke his image , spoilt his coloured smile.
He wiped off the years, he wiped away his life,
He wiped off the greasepaint and he wiped away the colours
And he wiped away the years with tears.
He wiped away the long nights and the trumpets and the drums
He wiped away the circuses, he wiped away the music
And he did not recognise
The image that stared up at his wise old sad hurt eyes,
With its wise old sad hurt eye.