Reviewing Shakespeare's Plays Through Pantomime

Subject: Shakespeare

Major Content: Pantomime, English Literature Unit Title: Shakespearean Plays Review

Goals and Objectives:

1. The students will recall and describe three elements of performance: movement, acting and character using appropriate terminology.
2. The students will dramatize one of the following previously assigned for English class Shakespearean Plays: Romeo and Juliet, Julius Cesar, Macbeth, Hamlet, Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice, King Lear or Taming of the Shrew.
3. The students will recognize the plays from each other's pantomimes.
4. The students will compare and chart different movements used to pantomime the plays.
5. The students will chart plot similarities and differences among the plays.

The Arts and Humanities academic expectations of production, analysis of forms, appreciation, all within Goal two of KERAare experienced throughout the lesson. The students will earn about the drama elements of performance.

AH-H-3.1.42 Create a dramatization of a literary work. [PE] (2.22, 2.23)

Context:

The students are studying Shakespeare in English Drama Literature.

Materials/Technology:

Chart

Procedure

Introduction:

We are done reading all the Shakespearean plays assigned in the curriculum for this year. Let's do something different to make sure that we will always have a basic idea of what each play is about.

Introduce the elements of performance: We will pantomime one of the plays for each other and try to guess which play is being pantomimed.

Method of Teaching: We are going to break in groups of three. Each group will secretly choose one of the plays and work for fifteen minutes in deciding how they will pantomime it for the rest of the class to recognize it.

Questions for group discussion:

How does pantomime differ from acting a play?

What is the difference between acting and movement? Is pantomime acting if it only includes movement but no voice? How do you develop a character utilizing solely pantomime? Can the posture and characteristic movement patterns represent a character as much as the character's lines and tone of voice?

Analysis and Written Product:

How where the pantomimes for the different plays different or similar? Where there certain movements that tended to be repeated or appear in several plays? Where there characters that were portrayed similarly through pantomime from the different portrayed plays?

How are all of these plays similar or different? Are there characters that resemble each other? What are some similar elements between the plots? What makes them unique? Let's identify a characteristic for each play that makes it strikingly different from each other.

Fill out the chart with your answers.

Closure:

Group review of the charts and the student's diverse answers. Teacher points out the ideas that seemed to hold consensus, and the peculiar ideas that few thought about, as well as discuss in group those that don't seem to hold true.

Assessment:

1. Define the following three elements of performance: movement, acting and character.
2. Students' pantomimed dramatizations.
3. Students ' ability to recognize the plays.
4. First part of the charts
5. Second part of the charts.