A Play in a Day – Online Workshop
(12 – 18 yrs) all year
Translating text into performance
WORKSHOP BY JOANNA LUCAS
Experience being part of a theatre company, without leaving home! Using Zoom, your students can develop key scenes of a text into their own creative performances, furthering their understanding and engagement with the characters and story. Plays are meant to be performed and enjoyed, but in the current circumstances, students may feel like they are missing out on the fun. Luckily, we can help! Guided by a professional actor with years of experience in translating text into performance, students gain a wider perspective of a play than can be found solely in the classroom.
Using the magic of technology, your students can remain connected and creative during this period of physical isolation, whilst furthering their understanding and response to a text.
Information
| COST | €650 / full day acting workshop – negotiable, discounts for more than one day |
| DATE | April 2020 onwards. Still to book in 2022-2023 |
| RUNNING TIME | Ideally a full school day (approx. 8:45 – 15:30) |
| VENUE | Home of your students (through Zoom/Hangouts/Skype…) |
| AGE RANGE | 12-18 years |
| PARTICIPANTS |
An entire class. They will be divided into smaller groups of roughly 4 students. |
| LANGUAGE | English (Joanna Lucas is from the UK) |
| REQUEST A SPECIFIC WORK | Are you working on a particular sonnet or play with your class? This workshop can be tailor-made to your requirements. If you plan on studying a specific play, we will fit the programme around that text. The activity plan is also tailored to age groups. |
Meet your workshop leader
Joanna is a British actress. She trained at Drama Studio London, graduating in 2013, and since then he has worked in television, radio and theatre. Her work as a performer spans from new writing and contemporary drama to Shakespeare, with plenty of singing and dancing along the way!
Ultimately, she believes in stories as one of the most valuable forms of communication. We see how news reports full of statistics leave us cold, but documentaries about the real people involved in tragedy, telling their personal tale, can be incredibly powerful. This belief in telling and connecting with stories has led her to work extensively with young people and adults as an English communication and acting coach, and workshop facilitator. She hopes to help people find their own voice, to tell the stories they want to share.
Workshop plan – 1 school day
Stage One:
All students taking part meet Joanna via Zoom for a 30 minute morning warm up and briefing as to how the day will work. Joanna immediately creates the atmosphere of a theatre company, preparing students to take a performance approach to the text. Groups are assigned and rehearsal times given.
Stage Two:
Joanna meets each smaller group via Zoom. Using the ‘break out room’ feature, Joanna can move between each group, who all meet simultaneously. After reading through the scene together, she encourages them to find the key moments and understand the journey of the scene and its role within the wider text. This knowledge is then applied to a creative performance, using key words and phrases, as well as notions of status and setting to create their own staging of this scene. Faithfulness to the text is less important than creating atmosphere and tone. Each group then meet via Zoom (or their preferred method) to continue working independently on their scene. Students are challenged to find ways to use the technology and restrictions of web-interaction to enhance their piece. Joanna can then meet each group later in the day to ‘check in’ before the final showcase of scenes.
Stage Three:
All students re-convene at the end of the day to meet with Joanna and showcase their work. The key scenes are shown in order to further cement the plot and timeline of the play. Students can see from each other how characters change throughout the play, how symbolism is re-visited and themes developed. A maximum of 1 hour will be allocated to this final session. This final session can also be recorded to be used by the teacher for further work or future reference.
Key areas of focus
- Understanding plot
- Understanding individual character journeys
- Exploring how to make creative, theatrical choices
- How to effectively work as an ensemble
- Experiencing the language of the text
- Exploring how directorial or performer decisions affect the meaning of the text and atmosphere of the story
Key benefits to students
- An entertaining and engaging way to learn from home.
- Learning to make decisive decisions as a group
- Communication skills
- Creative thinking
- Discover how to develop ideas as an ensemble
- Empathy skills
- Develop resourcefulness – learning to adapt and thrive within given scenarios and limitations
Example timetable
Assigned scenes emailed out to individual student groups.
8.45 – 9.15am: Group warm up and introduction on Zoom
10.00 – 11.00: Group 1, 2 and 3 session on Zoom
11.30 – 12.30: Group 4, 5 and 6 sessions on Zoom
***LUNCH***
13.15 – 14.00: All groups meet for a ‘check in’ with Joanna
14.15 – 15.15 Final showcase
