Lesson video

Hello, I'm Mrs. Bradley, welcome to this drama lesson, the first in the scheme of work, Devising from an image: Narrative approaches.

In this unit, we will explore what devising drama is, and a stimulus, and we will create a narrative using our vocal and physical acting skills to then perform a piece of theatre at the end of the unit.

In this first lesson, we will focus on what devising is, and a stimulus, and from that, create a narrative.

You'll learn all this terminology as we go along.

But now let's have a look, if you're ready, at what we need for this lesson.

So for this lesson, you'll need a pen, and some paper, or an exercise book or notebook, to make some notes.

So once you've got those ready, let's carry on.

Let's go through what we're going to do today.

We'll start by introducing you to some key terminology.

That will be some drama terminology we'll use throughout this lesson, and throughout this unit of work.

It might be useful to write these new words down.

First, we will look at a stimulus.

Stimulus is one of the key words for today, so don't worry, we will explain what we mean by that.

Then, we're going to create a mind map as a response to our stimulus, and that's what you'll need the pen and paper for.

We will then develop our own story from our response to the stimulus.

At the end of the lesson, there'll be an exit quiz to check you've learned some new things in this lesson today.

Let's get started.

Here's some terminology we're going to use in this lesson.

We're going to be looking at devising.

So devising is a style of theatre where the play is created by the performers or the company.

So what that means is that there's not a script to start with.

The devising comes from what we call a stimulus, which is a starting point for a piece of devising.

A stimulus can be anything.

It could be a theme, a word, a picture, a photograph, or a painting.

It could be a poem.

It could be some song lyrics.

And then from that starting point, a piece of theatre is made.

Devising is normally done in collaboration with a company of actors, designers, directors, maybe writers, but you'll be doing your own devising projects from home.

What we're going to produce first of all in this lesson is a narrative.

So we need our stimulus, and then when we have our stimulus, we develop a narrative from that, and a narrative is a storyline for a play.

If you want to pause and write down these key terminology words, then you can do that before we continue.

Let's double-check then.

Could a devised play be based on a stimulus? Is that true or false? That's right, it is true.

So for a piece of devising, we need something to start the idea, and that's what we call a stimulus.

So this is your stimulus for this unit.

Let's just take a moment to look at this photograph and see what we can see.

So the first thing we're going to do with the image is make a mind map, so using your paper, or exercise book, or notebook, let's create a mind map where you will record your ideas in response to the stimulus.

In the centre of your mind map, you can write stimulus, or you could do a description of what the photograph shows.

And then all around the mind map, we'll be generating our ideas in response to that picture.

Let's look at the image more closely now.

So what can you see in the image? Write down on your mind map everything you can see, and try to describe that in as much detail as possible.

Remember, for this, there are no wrong answers, because the stimulus is just the starting point, and your ideas will be whatever you get from that stimulus.

So take a really close look, and write down everything you see.

Pause the video while you make your mind map, and then let's resume when you're ready.

So how did you get on? Here's some things I noticed when looking at the image.

To me, the trainers look new, so this could be the first time they've been worn, or they could be fresh out of the box, and that could be something that's interesting in this story.

To me, the environment looks cold, or like it's winter, so maybe that's something that's relevant to the story, and also the location of where the person's stood.

It seems to overlook a town or some sort of village.

Maybe that's something that could be relevant in your story.

So again, there are no wrong answers, and you might've written down really different things to me, But if you want to now, you could add some ideas to your mind map.

So what I really want to know now is what really interests you about the image, and what questions might you have about it? Because with devising, we should be thinking not just what we know, but what do we not know? And therefore, that can help us generate even more ideas.

So what I'd like you to do is write down some questions.

Try to write down five questions on your mind map that you have about the image.

Pause the video while you do this.

But first I'll give you a couple of examples.

So I want to know, who is this person? I also want to know, where are they going? This could be something about a journey.

They could have come from somewhere, or could be going to somewhere.

So pause the video while you write down five questions you've got about the image, and then we'll carry on when you're ready.

So now we've got lots of ideas which we've generated from this image.

Let's think now about narratives.

So, remember, we said a narrative is a storyline that could be developed.

What narratives could come from this image? This could be a piece about a traveller on a journey.

Perhaps this character is on a long journey and has stopped for a rest.

Perhaps this character is on a very short journey, on their way home from school, or work, or a friend's house.

Perhaps this is someone escaping somewhere.

It could be home, it could be any place.

Maybe they are coming from the town that we saw in the picture or going to the town that we saw in the picture.

Remember, the options are endless.

It is important that your narrative is appropriate, and don't forget, it can be really fun to write comedy.

Not every story has to be serious, so you could write a really fun, exciting story about something that's really happy.

It doesn't have to be dark, and it doesn't have to be serious.

Just make sure your work is always appropriate for your age.

So now let's look back at our mind maps and our ideas.

Which do you think, out of all of your ideas, is the most interesting? Take a few minutes to look at your mind map, because we're now going to choose one idea to develop into a piece of theatre.

So with your ideas, you're going to choose one to develop into a narrative, and this is going to be a narrative for a piece of theatre, don't forget.

It's important to remember at this stage we're not writing a story, we're writing a play, or we are devising a piece of theatre.

So I would like your narrative to be able to feature up to three characters.

So let's have a look at how we make a narrative.

There are lots of different ways in drama to structure a story.

You'll know from reading books and from watching films, that not every story is structured in the same way.

But there is what we call a classical structure, and this has five parts.

This might be something you're already familiar with from your English lessons.

If not, feel free to pause this and write down each part of the five-part story structure.

So the first thing we need with a story is exposition, and exposition means it's where we meet the main character and we set the scene.

Following the exposition, we have what we call rising action.

So in this part of a story, the plot develops, the plot thickens.

More characters are normally introduced, and added conflict and tension make the story more interesting.

All that leads up to the climax.

So, often, the climax is the turning point in the story, the most exciting section.

After the climax, we have what we call falling action.

So this is where, if your story was a comedy, things would start to get better for the protagonist.

If this was what we would call a tragedy, or a serious piece of drama, things might start to unravel, get worse, for the protagonist.

This then leads us to the resolution.

So resolution is the end of a story.

Events in the play are going to be resolved, but this doesn't always have to be meaning everything is found out and known.

You will have heard of a cliffhanger, because stories can always end with an unknown or open ending, but that is still a kind of resolution.

So here you've got a five-part story structure, and we're going to structure our narratives like this today, because it helps us give our devising pieces some structure.

If you want to, at this point, just pause the video so you can write down these five points before we then look at the example of how you can make your story.

So here's an example that I came up with from the image as my stimulus.

I thought the trainers could belong to a boy, and he's called Chris, and he's 14.

So my exposition is that we meet Chris, who is a 14-year-old boy who is walking home from school.

In the rising action, though, he finds somebody living in the woods, and obviously, that's quite unusual, and he's quite concerned.

This is Jess, and this is a girl who used to go to his school.

In the climax of the story, he talks to Jess.

He discovers, unfortunately, that she's homeless, but he really wants to help her.

In the falling action, we find out that Jess stole some money, and so that's why she can't go home.

So I've decided to write quite a serious story with some sensitive issues, but you absolutely do not have to do that.

The resolution of this story is that Chris persuades Jess to come with him to talk to his parents, because he wants to help her.

But perhaps I want to leave this story open-ended, so maybe when Chris turns around and looks, Jess is gone.

Maybe the ending is that she's just gone to get her bag and pack her things, and she's going to follow Chris, meet with his parents, and everything will be resolved.

But perhaps it's more powerful if we just don't know.

So that's my idea for a five-part story structure.

I hope you can see the way I've set it out so that at each point, there is added information, and more conflict, and then resolution.

But your story might be completely different to this.

This is just a suggestion which I came up with from the stimulus.

So now the task that you have is to write your narrative.

I'd like you to pause the video, because this may take you some time, write your own narrative, based on your ideas from this lesson and from the stimulus.

Look again at your mind map for all those brilliant ideas that you've generated.

Use the five-part story structure to create a narrative of maybe up to three characters, and remember to add in conflict and tension.

You can resume the video when you've finished that task.

So that's the end of this lesson.

Well done for today.

You've learned about what devising is, learnt what a stimulus is, you've used that stimulus to generate lots of really creative ideas, and from that, we've developed a narrative using a classic five-part story structure.

That's a really impressive amount of work.

So if you want to now, you could share your work with Oak.

If you want to do that, please ask a parents or carer to share your work on Twitter.

You can type @OakNational, and #LearnwithOak.

Really well done for today, and I'll see you next time.

Bye.