WEEK FIVE
SELECTED ACTIVITIES
Tactic Cards Improv
In this activity, students were randomly assigned partners. Together, they drew a “scenario” card which told them the scene they together would have to improvise. Throughout their scene, they drew “tactic cards” from the side of the stage to determine how their character would respond to the conflict at hand, shifting the tone and escalating or deescalating the trouble. The activity revealed very real and contrasting human emotions, allowing students to see how unique the arc of a story can be. One example was a dad and daughter arguing about using the car on the weekend. The daughter character had to respond with anger (tactic) and the father calmly (tactic). These seemingly contrasting responses opened up a variety of strategies each character could use to get his or her way. This improv activity got students working together, while also improving the writing process by demonstrating the breadth of ways humans react to incidents in their lives.
Freeze
Continuing our work with improvisation, a method of acting that involves deep understanding and collaboration with one another, students participated in a game of Freeze!, in which two students improvise a scene that involves big and emphasized movements. While the two students improvise their scene, the other students watching have the ability to call “Freeze!” at any time. When one student calls Freeze, the two actors are frozen and the new student taps one of the actors out, takes their frozen position, and completely changes the scenario. Students had the agency to change the story in any way they wanted, which resulted in some stark contrasts in environments, situations, and moods. The two-person scenes went from lifting weights at the gym to a proposal gone wrong to two siblings arguing over clothes. Students had to trust their partner to create a scene where they could work together and build a story. Watch improve clips here.
Goodbye Stranger
This writing and dialogue-performance activity allowed students an opportunity to “go back in time” by telling the story of a time they had an encounter, then never saw a particular person again. They had to brainstorm this encounter then write about the dialogue they wish had happened. They then performed this hypothetical dialogue with a partner on the stage. The activity spurred conversations about being brave and speaking back to aggressive strangers, forgiving a former love interest, and getting to know the personal persona behind public figures. This activity can be very redemptive, and is a good tool for everyday life. Rewriting the “scenes” of our lives with the grace of hindsight can help us forgive ourselves and others.
Noun-Verb-Adjective Monologues
Combining the students’ skills in writing and acting, students wrote a noun, a verb, and an adjective on three separate pieces of paper. Students then drew one of each part of speech and were tasked with writing a monologue that combined their new noun, verb, and adjective. They could write from the perspective of any speaker, and the resulting monologues featured compelling characters in both comedic and dramatic situations. The students drew from previous exercises on breathing, projection, and expressions for the stage in their solo performance of the monologues. The innovative usage of nouns like “lemon tree” and verbs like “jogging” helped the students think outside of the box and will help them conquer future writer’s block.
Reach the Ending
Sometimes playwrights have a clear idea of how their play will end but aren’t quite sure of the steps to get there. This activity presented students with the task of finding their way to an end goal in an effort to simulate this common conundrum. After splitting into two groups, students were told the ending of a scene and the characters they would play but were tasked with improvising the beginning and middle of the scene in order to reach the desired end. One performance featured two students trying to break out of detention with their principal watching over them. This comedic display was both innovative and featured stellar, completely improvised one-liners that could find their way into later comedic scenes. The other group took the ending of the adoption of a child and made it so dramatic that everyone was on the edge of their seats. Their characters’ backstories were engaging and made us want to know more about the events that led to this scene. With these skills in their toolkit, students will be able to write their way to their desired outcomes in both their plays and their lives.
Playwriting for Peace Banner
In this activity, we made a large, 3-poster word cloud reminiscent of the one we created on our first day at Termokiss back in July. These posters said “Playwriting” “for” “Peace” and students were encouraged to write phrases, sentences, images, and memories of their time in the program. This was a great unifying activity as well as a way to bring our summer together full-circle. Students wrote things like the memories of songs we played during breaks, snacks we shared from both cultures, and inside jokes they created with their castmates throughout summer. They wrote many phrases about how enjoyable and fun the program has been, and how they will miss each other and the “best friends” they’ve made here. This, at the end of the day, is what makes the work meaningful.
A SUMMER IN REVUE
This final night of the workshop was a great success for our students and the program. It allowed our students the opportunity to perform and showcase the 10-minute plays they spent the summer creating. This proved to them the power of their stories through a public platform. This event was also special because former workshop participants who could not attend each day or write a play were given the opportunity to perform with their peers. This allowed students who had only worked together for some weeks to come back together, and rejoin in the celebratory evening. In addition, a sizable crowd attended the performance and included a mix of strangers, students’ friends, and members of the local arts community. Having collaborated with a variety of local partners, organizations, and arts initiatives, it was a great treat to see them in attendance at Playwriting for Peace’s final project.
The benefit of a staged reading instead of a full performance is the playwright’s words are center stage with no distractions in the form of direction, costumes, blocking, and more. By solely concentrating on the dialogue and stage directions, participants could dive into the stories of their peers, finding similarities in their experiences and narratives. In a piece on domestic assault, one of the male participants was reading the character of the abusive husband. By stepping in the shoes of the villain, the participant had an opportunity to see the disastrous effects of violence and can move forward in life with a better understanding of how to treat others. Moments like these occurred across the six pieces and showed how exposure to the stories of others can foster empathy among participants and the power of storytelling. Watch the ten-minute plays in a staged reading here.
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