Lesson video

Hi everybody, I'm Mrs. Bradley.

Welcome to this Drama Unit, Using Poems as a Stimulus for Devising and Developing Monologues.

This is our first lesson.

So in this lesson, we'll be looking at stimulus, which for this unit is a poem and we'll be starting to generate ideas that we can then develop into a devised performance which will be a monologue.

So if you're ready, let's get started.

So in this lesson, you will need a pen, an exercise book or some paper or a notebook to write in and a bit of space to work in.

So this is a practical lesson and we will be doing some practical work.

So you'll need some space to stand up and move around a little bit.

Just imagine stretching your arms out from side to side, and if you've got enough space to do that, then you'll be absolutely fine.

So when you're ready, let's move on.

So let's look at what we're doing today.

I hope by now you've done the intro quiz and that will have recapped some of your drama knowledge, and you will have thoughts about some of the terminology we're going to use today.

What we're going to do first, is look at our stimulus because as I said in introduction, this is a devising unit.

We start with the stimulus, and from that, we're going to develop our own devised monologue to perform.

When we look to the stimulus, we will be exploring some ideas that come from the stimulus and we'll do that practically.

When we've had to go at exploring some ideas, we'll then develop what we call a narrative from that.

So a narrative is going to be the storyline for your devised monologue.

And that will take us to the end of the lesson and to the exit quiz where you'll just recap your learning from today.

Let's look at our key words for this lesson.

So you might be familiar with some of these words.

We've got devising.

You've heard me say that a few times already.

Devising is a piece of theatre, which is created by the performers from a starting point.

Sometimes it's by a theatre company who all work together and sometimes it's the performance themselves.

So you might do devising work in your drama lessons at school.

What's important for devising is that we have a stimulus.

So the stimulus is the starting point, which is going to inspire our ideas for the devising.

We also, today, are going to look at still images.

So a still image is like a frozen picture.

And it's used to tell your story.

We're going to use still images today as a devising technique.

We are going to be using this poem by Grace Nichols as our stimulus for this devising unit.

The poem is called "When the Colours Spoke." So already, that sounds quite interesting because we might be thinking that colours can't speak, but we're going to find out what this poem is about, and we'll see that it's really interesting.

And then it's fun and it will generate lots of ideas for our devising.

So what I would like you to do is read the poem out loud yourselves, because you are here as drama students.

And the best way to hear a poem is to read it yourself in your own voice.

So on the video, you'll see the poem.

You'll see two or three verses at a time.

I'd like you to pause the video each time, just to read the poem out loud and then just press play again when you're ready to move on to the next verse.

So what you're looking for is what your immediate response is to the poem, what it makes you think of.

So let's have a look at the poem, "When the Colours Spoke" by Grace Nichols.

Great work, so hopefully, what we've done now is we have read the poem out loud.

So I think you'll agree it's a really interesting poem.

What we see is we see lots of different colours and we see some, maybe emotions and personalities attached to those colours.

But then the twist at the end is that the painter decides to do a sculpture instead.

So none of those colours get chosen.

So what do you think of the poem? What I would like us to focus on, first of all, is emotions, because we associate different colours with different emotions.

We wear different coloured clothes when we feel different emotions, in different seasons, and festivals, and on greetings cards.

Colours all the time are associated with different feelings, moods and events.

So this is called colour connotations.

For example, green is often associated with jealousy or envy.

So we've talked about people being green with envy, but we also associate green with nature because green is all around us.

Blue can also be a colour associated with sadness because we talk about feeling blue when we might be feeling sad, but blue is also a calm, serene and peaceful colour.

And blue is the colour of the sea and sky.

So it also has some connections to nature.

So colours all around us represent lots of different things.

What I would like you to do now is look at the poem again.

And this time, mindmap all of the different emotions, which you associate with the different colours in the poem.

There are absolutely no wrong answers here, because this is just about what you get as a response from the poem.

Think about where you've seen all these different colours and when they are used on different occasions, at different times of year, on different greetings cards, for example, and just make a mindmap with that information.

You can find a copy of the poem in the downloadable worksheet for this lesson.

I'd like to pause the video here and then resume when you've done your mindmap with your emotions.

Okay, so how did you get on? Hopefully, what you've got now is a mindmap, which is full of lots of different colours from the poem and lots of different emotions, which are associated with those colours.

I've got a few examples for you here, so let's go through these.

So I thought, first of all, pink, it's quite a playful, happy, cheerful, or maybe cheeky colour.

So I associate those emotions with the colour pink.

Yellow to me is very happy and very positive, it's a really bright and cheery colour.

Black is an interesting colour because it's very powerful, very strong, we associate black with authority and power, but also it's the colour of perhaps being sad and being mournful.

Traditionally, we sometimes choose to wear black at funerals as well.

White is a calm, serene, positive colour, perhaps also associated with innocence but those are the emotions that I might associate with the colour white.

And then green.

So I mentioned this already as an example, but green, we associate with jealousy, envy, perhaps being possessive.

So they are some of the words that came to my mind when I thought about those colours.

You might have totally different answers, and that is absolutely fine because there are no wrong answers here.

But if you like, what you could do now is just pause here and add to your mindmap if you want a few more ideas.

And if you're ready, let's continue.

So let's have a go now at physicalizing those emotions.

So I've stood up and I've got a bit more space around me.

I'd like you to do the same.

So make sure you can stand up and stretch your arms out for either side if you can do.

So we'll look at physicalizing those emotions that we've just talked about from the poem using our facial expressions and body language.

So as a quick recap, our facial expressions, we've got our eyes.

We can use our eyebrows.

We can use our mouth.

We can position our head in different ways.

Our whole body, we've got to express our emotions.

We can think about our shoulders.

We can hunch those forwards.

We can push those back.

We can think about what we do with our arms and hands.

We can fold our arms. We can have our hands behind our back.

We can have our arms by our sides.

Think about what our legs and feet are doing.

They can be crossed.

They can be slouched.

They can be strong and straight and tall.

So the way we use our whole body every day in life expresses how we feel and it expresses our emotions.

So I'm going to shout out some emotions and I want you to physicalize that emotion in a frozen image.

So these are still images.

I'll do a couple of examples for you.

So if I was to shout-out excited, I might do something like this.

And that is a very big still image, put my whole face shows my excitement.

I've got a wide mouth, wide eyes, raised eyebrows.

I've got really big and exaggerated, and I've stretched my arms up really high.

I've stretched out my fingers even.

You can't really see them, but my legs are wide and then hip width apart.

And I've got really straight body language in the rest of my body.

So this is me being excited.

If I was to do something totally different and show that I was shy, maybe I would close my body language.

I'll throw my feet right in to be together.

I might actually cross one leg over the other.

I think I might bring the homes down here to close in my shoulders and close my body language, I think I might lower my head, lower my eyes so that I'm not making eye contact.

And that would be my shy, still image.

So some of these are emotions.

Some of you might think they're more personality traits, but I'm going to shout them out.

And what I would like you to do is to physicalize each one, hold it for five seconds.

I'll count you down, then we'll relax and we'll move on to the next one.

So before we start, let's find our neutral body.

So that's your legs, adjust straight down hip with the part arms by sides, shoulders nice and relaxed.

Neck just nice and relaxed, head facing forwards.

So we are currently in neutral.

And I want you to now to show me the emotion of happy.

Hold that for 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, happy and relax, back to neutral.

Good, show me the emotion now of sad.

Hold sad for 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

And relax.

Good, can you show me now your own version of excited.

Hold excited for 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

Good and relax.

And show me angry.

The emotion of being angry.

Hold that for 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

Relax, good, as we go through them, shrink and get smaller, make them even bigger.

So the next few try and stretch them out even more, okay? Now, a bit more complex, show me the emotion of being jealous.

Thing really about your facial expression, how can you show me jealousy.

So show me jealous.

Hold that for 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, And relax.

Good, and show me nervous.

So quite similar to shy.

Show me your still image.

Facial expression, body language, nervous.

Hold that for 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, Relax, good.

Okay, show me now.

Let's make this really big and exaggerated don't forget, powerful.

Show me being powerful.

Hold that for 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

That's powerful, and relax.

Back to neutral.

Feel each time the difference and when you go back to the neutral body, since when you're in this extreme emotion state, so go back to your neutral body.

Okay, can you show me now, cheerful.

Cheerful is a version of happy, isn't it? But show me cheerful for 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

Raise.

Good, relax.

Can you show me now a bit more complex arrogance.

So what would arrogance look like if you're not familiar with the word, it means being very proud, thinking a lot of yourself, thinking that you're the best, but like purple in the poem.

So that's arrogant.

Show me that, five, hold it, 4, 3, 2, 1.

and relax.

Good, well done.

And to finish, can you show me calm? So it's still image that would show me the emotion of being calm.

Hold that for 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

and relax.

It's a nice one to end on.

And that's your neutral body.

So what we've done there is we've shown how through a little bit of physicality, facial expressions, body language, we can share a range of really, really different, really extreme contrasting emotions.

And so what do we do next, we'll always incorporate this.

There will always come back to how does that show that emotion.

And if I was a character experiencing that emotion, what does that look like in my body, okay? It's a great start, great exercise.

But all those emotions were inspired by the poem.

So colours had just a really simple starts in putting in the poem, can really do that for us, so well done.

Let's carry on.

Great work, well done.

So what you've started to do now is physicalize those different emotions and being able to show different emotions through your body and through your facial expressions is a brilliant acting skills.

So well done, you've developed something really, really useful there.

So let's move on, to move on slightly from emotions, to look at the colours being personalities.

And this is exploring the stimulus in a little bit more depth.

So what Grace Nichols does in this poem is she gives each colour a personality.

So this is called personification in English.

And it's as if each colour becomes a person of its own, it speaks and it has different thoughts and feelings.

So let's imagine each colour was a character.

So a fictional character in a play, you can see where this is going to hope.

So what type of person would they be? I'd like you to read the poem again now.

And what you're looking for this time is the type of person you think each colour represents.

Because as we see in the poem, each colour speaks, they've got dialogue, they've got opinions and thoughts and feelings.

So what kind of person are they? And what's that personality? So again, you can find the poem on the downloadable worksheets.

I'd like you to pause the video here, whilst you make notes on the personality of each of those colours in the poem.

Pause the video while you do this task and then resume when you're ready.

Fantastic, so what we've got now is a list of people really, we've got characters that have got personalities and that's come from each burst in the poem where those different personalities are described as colours.

So what we're going to do now with those is we're going to create still images.

And this was one of our key words for today.

So a still image as a quick reminder, is a frozen picture, which is used to tell your story or communicate your story.

So this is a devising technique.

So we're going to use still images now to generate even more ideas.

We can also use still images as part of the performance itself.

But here they are being used to generate some more ideas for us.

So as a quick recap, in still images, we can use eye contact.

We can use our facial expressions, that's communicating what we feel through our face.

We can use all of our body.

So our body language like we did in the emotions task, and we can use gestures.

All we need to make sure we do is keep it really still, frozen and focused.

So I've given you a quick checklist there of what's an effective still image should have.

We should have clear use of body language, making sure that's nice and specific.

It should be still, obviously or else it's not a still image.

It should have some nice focus to it.

It should have clear eye contact.

So it's very clear which direction you're looking in a way your focus is.

And clear expressions.

So if you're ready, let's do still images task, really starting now to physicalize the colours from the poem.

So our task now is going to be to do a still image of each colour from the poem.

And what we've done is develop those colours into a character by thinking about the personality that is suggested by Grace Nichols, and also the personality we've developed for them in the notes that you've just made.

So I'm going to shout out the colour.

And from that, I want you to show me a still image using your whole body be nice and big and expressive of the colour of that character.

So it's the character of red or the character of blue.

And from here, we're going to start to develop characters to use in our own narratives and performances.

So let's look at an example.

The character of blue in the poem, blue is described as being heavenly and sea breezy.

So I imagined blue to have quite a theory or quality, that means otherworldly, quite heavenly.

I also imagine blue to be very calm and very serene.

So I imagined blue to walk on their tiptoes.

I'm going to put my tiptoes.

To always keep their head very high.

To walk with their arms outstretched.

And to always have a calm serene facial expression.

So this is my still image as a colour blue.

If I was to extend that into a movement, I might think the blue moves with very graceful flowing, gliding movements.

Oh, hello, I am blue, very nice to meet you.

Everything's so nice and calm because I'm just, I'm blue and everything's great.

So that might be my character of blue.

If I was to take that step further because they are heavenly in sea breezy, but our first step is to do the still image of that character.

So if you already in neutral.

So as we've said before, that means, head, just nice and relaxed, neck, relaxed, shoulders just back and down, arms by side, legs just hit with the parts.

This is your neutral body.

Then we go into our character and we come back to that.

So a nice big expressive still image place.

Okay, first of all, the character of green go, still the image of green.

Hold that for 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

And relax.

Good, still image of blue now, your version of a character blue.

Hold that for 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

And relax.

Good, the character of yellow now.

So hold that still image character of yellow, make as big as you can.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and freeze.

Good, and the character and white is next.

So white in the poem.

Hold your still image of the character white for 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

Relax, back to neutral each time keeping these big, okay? So not making them smaller each time, keeping them nice and big using as much space as possible.

Character of back is next.

So the character of black from the poem, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and freeze.

Good, well done, relax.

The character of purple is next.

So the character of purple inspired by the poem showing your purple personality in five, hold that 4, 3, 2, 1, and relax.

Well done back to neutral, two more to go, it's eight in total.

It's the character of red next.

So the character of red get into your nice big still image please.

Hold that for me really, still 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and freeze.

Lovely, and then relax back to neutral.

Last one is the character of pink.

So pink hold me your pink still image please.

Nice and clear and hold that for 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and relax.

And we are back to neutral.

Well done, so eight different characters, eight different personalities.

We're going to now see if we can take that one step further into a walking exercise.

Why do this a little bit with my character blue earlier on, if you've got, a little bit more space, you can just move up and down slightly, you can just like walk around.

I want you to now walk the space, as some of those characters.

So I decided my character was blue would be on tip toes.

I would walk in very smooth flowing movements, at this slow pace, I think blue is very gentle, uh, very calm, hmm, very serene.

And so I might walk around the space like that to show that I am this blue character.

And maybe red, red is passionate, angry.

Maybe we can speak and drastic.

Maybe red walks around the space in huge, big exaggerated sweeping movements.

So each character, as well as having a still image might move around the space really differently.

Let's just have a quick go at that.

If you've got the room, if you haven't got space, we can pause it and you can move on.

Or we can have a little go at the walking the space exercise.

So I would like you to have a go place, at walking around the space, just walking backwards and forwards as the colour purple first of all.

So purple walking the space as your character of purple.

Thinking about how you've decided to do that, what your character of purple would look like occupying that whole space.

Thinking about your tempo, that's the speed of your movement.

Thinking about the rhythm of your movement, thinking about the placement of your feet on the floor, where you're holding your shoulders and your head, just walking at around the space as the colour purple.

And then just back to neutral, so now just walking out yourself.

And then can you show me your walk as the colour red now? So transitioning from yourself into the colour red, how does red occupy the space? How do they walk around the space? So walking around the space as the character of red now, again, thinking about your movement through the space, what you do with your hands, where your centre of gravity is you're leaning forward back is your heads up or down? So we're walking around the space as our character of red.

That's a neutral, it's about now just you walking around the space as yourself.

I'll have one more, walking around the space as yellow now.

So yellow might be that cheery happy colour, how do they walk around the space? So again, thinking about where their head is placed, their shoulders, is that gravity forward or back? Thinking about the placement of their feet on the floor, what's the tempo? What's the rhythm of movement? Are they fast or slow? Big or small steps walking around the space as the core character of yellow.

Good, and then back to neutral for the last time, and I just bring that to a standstill, good.

So what that's done is it's helped us go a step further with our characterization.

So we've now got a deeper sense of what these characters might look like, how they think, how they might move through space.

And I hope what you found was you had three different movements in very different ways of moving through the space for each of those characters.

Well done, we're developing some really clear characters time them to put them into a narrative.

Great work, so I hope you've enjoyed that task, it was fun for me.

So what we're starting to see now is that these colours are really people and they're developing personalities.

So we've seen that maybe the colour purple is quite arrogant and quite proud and thinks a lot of themselves.

The colour red is a bit dangerous and a bit passionate.

The colour pink maybe keeps getting themselves into scrapes by pushing their look a little bit.

So you will have explored each of those colours yourselves, and you will have started to see how each colour is a personality and could be seen as a person and a character.

So let's now think about ideas where we could put those characters together.

So what would happen if you had a narrative, that's a story where let's say black, pink or red appear together? So what that mean, is those characters appear together, what would happen? What would they get up to? What would happen if we combined purple and pink? And I don't mean in the rainbow.

I mean, what would happen if those two characters were together in a story? So here is your task.

Think about the poem again.

Okay, to make a mindmap, write the title of the poem in the centre, then think of two or three of those characters, which we just explored practically.

And think what would happen if we put those characters together, try and think of different scenarios where those characters would appear, where would they be? What would happen? What would the outcome be? And they are then going to be ideas for a narrative for storyline that we could turn into a performance.

I've done an example for you with some of my ideas.

So let's just take a look.

So one idea I had was that blue, green and red, enter an arts competition.

So I was inspired by the poem being about painting and sculpture.

And I thought, what would happen if those three characters were entering this art competition? So red, because red is so passionate is desperate to win, but has no artistic talent whatsoever.

So red steal's blues painting.

So maybe at the last minute, when all the paintings are on display, red switches the paintings, belonging to red and blue, but then red wins.

So maybe ends there, or maybe red is found out.

Maybe red is wrapped with guilt, but that's an idea that there's some sort of competition going on themed around art.

And there's something that red does in that narrative.

So that's one idea.

I then had an idea that the colour pink, our pink personality desperately wants a pet, borrows a Flamingo from the zoo.

And I got the Flamingo idea from the poem because the Flamingo is mentioned in the poem.

So that's another thing that you could do.

You could explore the different objects and items in the poem as well.

But then pink ends up with this Flamingo and it causes absolute chaos.

Running wild through the corridors at school, biting people try to take it home, can't smuggle it into the house, it's chaos.

So that was another idea that could be explored.

My final idea is coming back to the idea of purple, being very arrogant and proud and obsessed with royalty to the point where purple plots to steal the crown jewels.

Yellow, however tries to stop her very reasonable rational person, yellow, and just tries to intervene.

And then that could again be quite a comic story.

So actually all three of my ideas here are quite comic because I think this poem is really fun and sort of to me, generates those wacky quiets exaggerated characters.

All right, so it's your task now then to think about how you could generate some ideas like this, you can use any of my ideas as a starting point if you want to, or I'm hoping, obviously you've got some of your own as well.

So spend a few minutes now on your mindmap tasks, don't forget again, you've got the poem you can look at any time, think of those colours now as being people, as being characters with personalities, what would happen if we put those together? What scenarios could they get into? Okay, so pause the video now to make your mindmap.

So think about scenarios which could feature two or three of these characters, what would happen? What could possibly go wrong? Think about perhaps including objects or anything else mentioned in the poem to inspire you.

Try and get a few different ideas for narratives down, and then we'll resume the video when you're ready.

Great, well done.

So what we've got now then is a mindmap with lots of different ideas of narratives, where each narrative features maybe two, maybe three characters that we've developed from the poem.

And that could now be developed into a devised performance that we could work on.

So now we're going to choose one of those, all right? So look back at your mindmap, choose one idea which you could develop into a narrative for a play.

Remember that we're not writing the story in English.

This is going to be a devised monologue, which you will stand up and perform.

So now I want you to take that idea, which might just be a sentence and plot it out as a narrative.

So you can just do this as bullet points.

You can give this a simple beginning, middle and end.

You can do this just in three points.

So there are three events that happen beginning, middle and end, you can make it into five or six different bullet points if you want to.

But what you're just doing is plotting your narrative from start to finish.

Top tips to remember, is going to be a performance, so what will happen in the end is you will perform this as a monologue from one of those characters perspectives.

So don't forget, it needs characters.

It needs two, maybe three characters that you've generated from the poem.

And it's a drama, it's a piece of narrative.

So don't forget their thoughts at some, either conflict, a bit of tension or some comedy.

So something needs to happen.

And then that, that needs to be resolved, that's just a fundamental rule about drama.

So there needs to be a bit of conflict, a bit of tension or a bit of comedy.

This is your final task then is to plot out your own narrative.

So then pause the video here to complete this narrative task.

Remember, as I've just said, it will be a devised monologue performance.

You need events, you need characters and make sure it's got a simple beginning, middle and end.

Take as long as you need to plot out your narrative and then just resume the video when you're ready.

Right, well done, that's the end of our lesson.

So you've done a huge amount of work today.

You start off with a poem that was our stimulus.

And from that poem, we've explored emotions.

We've explored colour connotations.

We've explored personalities, we've developed those into characters and then finally develop those characters into a narrative.

And now we're ready to create a device piece of performance, which we'll start next lesson.

So well done what you could do now, if you want to share your work with Oak.

If you do want to do that, make sure you do ask a parents or carer.

You can tag @OakNational and hashtag #LearnwithOak.

Well done for work today, and I'll see you next lesson.