Summarization of the HL Theater Course (first 3 weeks)

So far this year, IB Theater HL has consisted of lectures and activities. These lectures and activities provided a chance for students to “come out of their shell”, meaning that students have gotten a chance to become comfortable taking part in class through gaining knowledge on specific aspects of theater and acting. These aspects can be explored through the specific teaching points explored so far in the course.

Teaching Point Number 1: Understanding and Using Context Clues

This theater game was the ice breaker to the course. The students stood in a circle facing each other on the stage. Taking turns, each student had to improvise dance moves that would be mimed by the other students while a two minute song from The Band’s Visit played. Gestures the students did consisted of long stokes of the arm and quick snaps of the fingers, reflecting both the rhythm and the melody of the song. What was the goal of this? The goal was to begin to understand context when on stage and how to play off of the context of a story when acting or taking part in a performance.

Teaching Point Number 2: Use of Body Language and Facial Expression

Students were divided into two groups and collaborated by creating a silent movie. This silent movie was, in relation to the first teaching point, influenced by how the students felt when listening to a song of their choice. One of the groups decided to choose “Ti Moune's Dance”, a song from the musical theater known as Once on this Island. By the practice of pantomime, the students created a plot that reflected what the music was telling them. The setting was a classroom. The characters consisted of two characters (a student and a teacher). It started off slow, therefore creating a scene where the student fell asleep. Once the song picked up, the teacher aggressively attempted to wake up the student. When the music slowed down, the teacher gave up. Funny enough, there is faint clapping at the end of the song. Paying attention to this detail and adding humor, the student wakes up and walks out of the class after seeing (what appears to be) the teacher asleep at the desk.

It is important to mention the body language that was necessary to use in this silent movie. The student had to fall asleep. This meant that the facial expressions of the student had to look almost groggy and bored (bored for the reason that they were taking a test, using setting to influence emotion). Once the student fell asleep, the teacher had to look angry, furious. The teacher, because no words were allowed to be used, needed to execute showing volume (voicing sound) in a different way. Instead of talking or shouting, body language such as jumping up and down, slapping the table, and shaking the student got the message across that the teacher was mad and/ or frustrated in this situation. The goal of the silent movie was to collaborate with others and understand how to express emotion without using words, but instead body language.

Teaching Point Number 3: Learning Stage Directions

Students were lectured on the importance of knowing stage directions.Students could take away from the lecture that the director, actors and stage crew must understand specific directions of the stage in order to create efficient and easy understanding when blocking. The specific sections of the stage are known as UL, CL, DL, UC, C, DC, UR, CR, DR. It is key to understand that left and right are perceived by the actor’s view (facing the audience) and not the audience’s view.  

Teaching Point Number 4: Understanding Levels

Another theater game played amongst the students was a game where the students had to create tableau’s, a picture on stage representing a certain idea, theme, emotion, and/ or setting. This representation could be done by resembling both living and nonliving things (ex. Setting- Office; One student is a receptionist and another student is the desk that is being worked at). The picture created should show different levels on stage. Through the lecture that went along with this activity, students could begin to understand the importance of levels on stage. This means creating both physical highs and lows as well as ditching the idea that actors must stand in a straight line when reciting lines. This game and lecture explained how to use the whole stage to the actors advantage.

The beginning of the IB Theater HL course has allowed students to dive into the fundamentals of acting such as stage blocking, expression of emotion, character development through aspects such as setting, (etc.).  As the course progresses, students will have an even better grasp of theater and its many aspects of it in order to become even better theater participants.