collaborativecreativity.comcollaborativecreativity.com/.../04/...guide-2012.docxWeb viewCommunity-Based Performance. at Duke University. She facilitates the creation of original performances

Teacher Guidefor a Residency

Integrating Social Studies, English Language Arts,

and Theatre Arts

What Were They Thinking?

for Third, Fourth, and Fifth Grades

© 2012 Sheila Kerrigan. Do not reprint without permission.

[email protected]

2310 Stansbury Rd.Chapel Hill NC 27516

919-929-1624 h919-360-0690 c

Purpose

The purpose of this residency is to spark student interest and deepen understanding of Social Studies events, historical figures, trends, movements, and concepts chosen by the classroom teacher. The path is through a creative exploration using writing and drama.

NC Common Core & Essential Standards & Objectives Taught

English Language Arts EITHER: Grades 3-5, W.1 Write opinion pieces on topics or texts, supporting a point of view with reasons.OR: W.3 Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, descriptive details, and clear event sequences.

Social StudiesGrade 3.H.1 Understand how events, individuals, and ideas have influenced the history of local and regional communities. 3.H.1.2 Analyze the impact of contributions made by diverse historical figures in local communities and regions over time.Grade 4.H.1.3 Explain how people, events and developments brought about changes to communities in various regions of NC.

Grade 5.H.2 Understand the role of prominent figures in shaping the United States. 5.H.2.1 Summarize the contributions of the “Founding Fathers to the development of our country.

Theater ArtsGrade 3, 4, 5 C.1 Use movement, voice, and writing to communicate ideas and feelings. Grade 3.C.1.2 Apply appropriate volume and variation in pitch, rate, and tone to express character. Grade 4.C.1.2. Apply appropriate vocal elements of volume, pitch, rate, tone, articulation, and vocal expression to various types of literature and storytelling. Grade 5.C.1.2 Apply appropriate vocal elements of volume, pitch, rate, tone, articulation, and vocal expression to various types of formal and informal presentations.Grade 4.C.1.3 Understand how to adapt sources, such as literature texts, poetry, and speeches, into scripts. 5.C.1.3 Construct original scripts using dialogue that communicates ideas and feelings.

Rationale: Why Drama?

The logic behind this residency is that moving and improvising and imagining (what actors and dancers do) can provide fertile soil for thinking and writing. After imaginatively and physically exploring a character, it is easier to write in that character’s voice and point of view.

Sheila KerriganMime, Teaching Artist & Author

Ms. Kerrigan is a mime, director, teacher and author of The Performers’ Guide to the Collaborative Process. She performs her show, The Mime Who Talks! for children, and Mime Explains String Theory! for adults. She conducts residencies in schools, after-schools, colleges, and community settings and leads professional development sessions for teachers and teaching artists. Sheila served on Alternate ROOTS’ Resources for Social Change Training Team and has taught Community-Based Performance at Duke University. She facilitates the creation of original performances with community groups. As co-director of TOUCH Mime Theater for 17 years, she collaboratively created twenty original performances and toured the eastern U.S.

Sheila has conducted residencies for arts councils and universities, performed and taught in prisons, juvenile detention centers, hospitals,

in corporate settings, street festivals, and on television, and has directed for Jelly Educational Theater. She has been a North Carolina A+ Fellow since 2001, and is listed in the North Carolina Arts Council Touring Artist directory. She is president of the Southeast Center for Arts Integration.

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Skills and Concepts Involved

Cooperation & Working in Groups: Working with partners; moving safely and with focus in a group; working alone in a group; listening; developing kinesthetic awareness of self and others.Communication: Communication of ideas, characters, and feelings to others; listening to others; using positive speech when giving peer critiques; speaking clearly with volume and energy when performing; facing the audience.Creative thinking: Creating a supportive atmosphere so that people can take the risk of creative thinking; using group & solo brainstorming techniques; creating and exploring a character. Self-expression: using words, movement and body language to communicate thoughts, feelings, characters, and stories. Writing: writing from the point of view of a character in history; writing in a specific genre (monologue, letter, or poem); incorporating sensory details in writing.

Preparing for the Residency

Two to Four weeks before the residency Sheila Kerrigan will meet with the teaching team to plan the residency. We will:

look at Social Studies & English curricula, clarify which Social Studies content areas to focus on, set goals and objectives, look at resources, agree on a schedule, and discuss assessment tools.

One to Two weeks before the residency Teachers assign student groups a character from history or literature. Students

research, take notes and write a short paper or outline summarizing what they know: Who, what they did, when they lived and when they did it, where they were, how they did it, why they did it, and what changed because of this character’s actions. Students may work alone or in groups of two, three, or four.

By the time the residency begins Each student or group has written a paper or outline with information about

their chosen Social Studies topic. Teachers or students have cleared wall, bulletin board, or white board space in

the classroom for use during the residency. Resources relevant to the Social Studies study areas are available in the room

and in the media center.

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During the Residency

Honorable Teacher: stay in the classroom at all times! Teachers, not visiting artists, are responsible and liable for their students. This is not a time for errands. By contracting for this residency, you are committing to being present in the classroom during the entire residency and participating fully in the activities. Please be prepared to model life-long learning for your students, and to work with me as a team-mate in the classroom.

I hope to work with you as a partner; and I hope you will contribute expertise, work with groups, monitor behavior, assist students who need help, teach and learn alongside me, and assess learning and skill-building as they happen. I also hope we can consult together daily about what is working and not working, and how to improve the residency as it happens.

Introduction to Classroom Activities

You don’t have to aspire to be a performer to enjoy being a mime. You can create mime in the spirit of play—not play as in ‘theatre,’ but play as in a game. Just as you played ‘cops and robbers’ or ‘house,’ you can play at mime to create your own world and amuse yourself within it. It doesn’t matter if you don’t think of yourself as artistic or graceful—no one’s keeping score in this game. If you let yourself be guided by imagination and really feel your fantasy, your illusion, with all its art and grace, will naturally follow. (From Mime, by Kay Hamblin.)

Note to Teacher

Mime uses the creative instrument everyone has: our body. We can all use our bodies to express our ideas and feelings, even those of us who don’t speak English, or who have trouble reading. Many of the children who shine in mime class are kinesthetic learners, and they may struggle in academic class work. As a teacher, please keep an eye out for the children who show talent as mimes. Offer them opportunities to use their creativity and expressive bodies in your class. Let them mime a book report or act out a scene from history or embody a scientific principle.

Suggestions for Classroom Activities Before the Mime Residency1)Discuss mime, its definition and history. Below is some information you can use: Definition

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The origin of the word mime (rhymes with time) is the same as that of imitate, mimic, and pantomime. In ancient Greek, pan or panto means everything, and mimos means to imitate, act, or dramatize, usually without words, and sometimes as a burlesque or farce.

It is used as a noun, meaning a person who does mime: “I am a mime.” Many mimes create invisible objects and suggest whole worlds by using only their bodies to communicate. It can also mean the art form: “Mime is the art of silent communication, although many mimes are not silent.”

Mime as a noun can also mean a skit, sketch, or act which involves mime: “Red Skelton did a mime about a parade.” “Do some mime for me—show me the wall.”

Used as a verb, to mime means to act out a story, an idea or a feeling: “I will mime a turtle in a hurry.”

Finally, it can be an adjective: “Here is some mime food. Eat up!”

We use the words mime and pantomime interchangeably; they mean almost the same thing.

Commedia dell'Arte troupe Gelosi in a late 16th-century Flemish painting (Musée Carnavalet, Paris) http://en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Commedia_dell'arte

History

Mime has been with us since the first cave people acted out their experiences of the hunt. The ancient Greeks used mime in religious ceremonies. Two thousand years ago the Romans staged popular mime performances in the arena and made mimes the priests of Apollo. Many African cultures currently incorporate mime into their community celebrations and religious rituals. For centuries, many Asian cultures have blended mime and masks into intricate dances, dramas, and story-telling. Many Native American communities today weave mime into their religious and cultural lives.

During the European Middle Ages, mime remained a part of religious instruction, particularly in mystery and morality plays. In the sixteenth century, mime emerged from churches and came back to the stage and into the streets for pure entertainment in the form of the Italian Commedia dell’Arte, with its cast of stock characters, one of whom was Pierrot, the clown/fool.

A man in nineteenth century Paris named Deburau expanded the traditional Pierrot from a minor slapstick character to the center of serious drama. Without a

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word, he acted out stories about Pierrot, his life and love. He was the first modern European mime.

The French mime, Marcel Marceau, (who died in 2007) came up from the tradition started by Deburau, adding some modern French influences to create his whimsical character called, “Bip.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Marcel_Marceau

In the United States, the modern mime tradition begins with the silent films of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and other film artists of the twenties and early thirties who got their start in Vaudeville.

Marcel Marceau as Bip Charlie Chaplin

Contemporary MimeContemporary mime does not always have to be silent—many mimes use music, and dialogue. Some mimes use masks, props, and sets to create their imaginary worlds.

Some more potular performers who use mime in their work are Michael Jackson (his moonwalk is a mime technique), David Bowie (he started as a mime), Red Skelton, Dick Van Dyke, Robin Williams, Shields and Yarnell, the Swiss mask group, Mummenshantz, Cirque Du Soleil, Blue Man Group and the Mentos and Coca Cola guys. Hip hop dance and break dance incorporate many mime techniques like the robot, the wave, the moonwalk, isolations and separations.

2) Discuss Body Language & Non-Verbal CommunicationTalk about every-day gestures we use to communicate without words. Ask students to show some gestures they are familiar with. (Gesture: a motion of the body or part of the body to express or emphasize ideas, emotions, etc.) Some common gestures to start off the conversation are: waving, “Hi;” crooking the finger toward yourself to say, “Come here;” showing agreement or approval with a thumbs-up; making a face to show, “Yuck!” Different cultures use different gestures to mean different things; if you have a multi-cultural classroom, this

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could be an entrée into conversation about different cultural communication norms.

Talk about how we express different emotions using our faces and bodies. Ask students to show how they would sit if they were feeling happy, sad, scared, angry. Note that different people do different things for the same feelings. Have students look around and identify specific differences in how others are expressing their emotions—what is different about the posture, the placement of feet, legs, arms, hands, heads, and the facial expressions?

3) Use Pantomime to CommunicateHave students remember an every-day activity and show what it is without using any props; have them mime the objects. This exercise can be changed to show some activity you’ve never done, or something you are good at, or a place you’d like to go, or a word that starts with a certain letter or phoneme, or a scene from a story you’ve been reading—just about anything can be mimed.

4) Show a silent video:an excerpt from my children's show, The Mime Who Talks!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xns7RRpDFTgClown Princes of Hollywood, 27 minutes.Charlie Chaplin’s Gold Rush, 55 minutes, Shanghied, 25 minutes, The

Tramp, 25 minutes, or The Kid, 52 minutes.E. Reid Gilbert and Robin Pyle’s The Art of Mime, 30 minutes.Buster Keaton’s The General, 55 Minutes.Marcel Marceau’s The Mime of Marcel Marceau, or Pantomimes.Tony Montanaro’s Illusions.Jacques Tati’s Mr. Hulot’s Holiday.Mamako Yoneyama’s Baggage.

After viewing a film, discuss the ways the artist uses movement and image to communicate, how or if the silence contributes to the power of the communication, what is lost and what is gained by using non-verbal communication, and how the audience is affected by the use of movement and image to communicate.

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