Arts and culture
Grade 8
Personal and social skills
Module 3
Improvisation: arbitrary colours
DRAMA
Activity 1
Workshop method:
- One of the learners writes down a word or a sentence (on the writing board), and a second learner adds a word or sentence that supplements the first. Subsequent learners proceed to add sentences or words until a meaningful paragraph is completed. Everyone in the group must make a contribution until a text/script is created. You may require two or more periods to write a significant text.
Activity 2
- When the text has been written, you have to work out appropriate MOVEMENTS for the written sentences. You also have to build a set, using boxes and empty crates. It is fun to build a three-dimensional STAGE from scratch! You should incorporate different levels, which will lend interest to the performance.
Activity 3
- You have to bear in mind that the colour of your group represents emotion. Blue, for instance, suggests hope or despair. If you decide to work with HOPE, the text should indicate this very clearly. You could have an introductory sentence like: ‘I do hope that I will get a holiday job”.
Now you have to start adding to the sentence. Another first sentence might be: The farmer who says “I hope my wheat will grow … .”. Something like this may be very exciting, because you could start by sitting hunched up on the stage and slowly reaching up, like plants that are growing. Each “plant” will have to have something to say. You will need appropriate music for atmosphere – slow music, for instance, to illustrate growth.
Activity 4
- Blue cloth could be draped across the stage. Touches of green and brown will represent lands. You might use branches and leaves quite effectively.
You may deviate from your allotted colours (blue, or red or yellow) in this section and also mix colours. If your emotions are mixed, you may indicate this with various colours – drape various fabrics round your body so that the viewer will see how your emotions vary.
Your words/DIALOGUE will naturally have to match the activities that you plan to represent.
Activity 5
- Once all the groups have completed the different tasks, and the writing is ready, production has to start in earnest. Remember that dance movements can be incorporated, as well as reaching up or out and stretching, or any movement that is appropriate to the theme. Exuberant movements could be used with red and yellow, green and purple, but this does not mean that you have to bounce up and down all the time. Under movement we think of large movements of the body, and also of small, intimate movements, like gestures of the hands, looking up into the “sky”, curling up and subsiding to the floor.
Activity 6
- You should have finished memorising the words in your scripts by now. Everyone should be familiar with the contents of the text and know exactly where and how to move, and what the climax of the production is. But do remember that every production must have a BEGINNING, a MIDDLE and a CLIMAX! It is usual for the ending (climax) to be happy. Try to develop your story in a way that makes this possible.
