Lesson video

Hi, everybody.

I'm Mrs. Bradley.

Welcome back to drama.

This is lesson four in the devising from an image, narrative approaches scheme.

All of your lessons so far have been building up to a performance of a monologue, which we'll work on today.

So let's have a look at what you'll need for this lesson.

In this lesson, you'll need a pen.

You'll need an exercise book, notebook or some papers to make some notes on and you will need a little bit of space to work in.

That's because you are going to be practically rehearsing and performing your monologue.

So just enough space for you to stand up and perhaps put your arms out to either side.

You will then also need your monologue from the previous lesson, which you wrote out.

So just take a second to make sure you've got those things.

Then we'll have a look at our learning for today.

So I hope by now, you've done the intro quiz, which will have recapped some of your prior learning.

What we'll then do, is we'll just go back over what we've done so far and make sure that we are all up to date.

We'll then explore some vocal and physical skills to apply to your monologue today.

And that's how we take it from page to stage.

So we've done the devising process.

What we'll now look at is how we turn that into a performance by applying our acting skills.

After that, we'll apply them and make sure we've got some time to rehearse them and go through what those skills look like and sound like in our own monologues.

That we'll start to really polish our monologues, and that will mean adding in just a couple more things and then we will perform them.

And if you have the opportunity, what you could do at this stage is building your monologue so that you can then watch it back as a performance.

That will just then just take us through the exit quiz where I will just double-check your learning from today.

So let's look at some key words which we're going to be using in this lesson.

Because this lesson is all about performing, we're going to be focusing on some vocal skills, which are the way we use our voice, varying it during performance, such as changing things like the volume of our voice.

So vocal skills is a key word.

Body language is also a key word because that's when we use our body.

to express the emotions of our character.

When we publish our monologues today, we're also going to be looking at the stage directions.

So they help us know how to deliver a speech or line or they tell us when to exit, where to go, where to settle, where to stand.

So we'll be also adding in stage directions to our performances today.

Here's a recap then of what we did last lesson.

We've been using this picture as stimulus for the last three lessons leading up to this one.

What we've done with this image is we've improvised, we've developed a response to the stimulus.

We've then scripted a monologue for character in a devised narrative that we've made up.

We then added in more techniques such as thought trackings to add more depth.

At the end of the last lesson, we did review our progress by reading our monologues out loud and thinking how did they sound so far? Are they successful? But we'd might tweak and polish them a little bit more today.

So let's start by learning about some acting skills.

You might have done some of this already at school but this may be new to you.

So what we're going to do, first of all, is introduce some of the basic vocal and physical acting skills that we would use in drama.

So vocal skills, first of all.

Vocal skills are the way we use our voice to communicate on stage.

There's lots of different aspects to our voice which we can use at different times during our performance and in different ways.

The key is to vary our use of voice.

The reason we do this is to keep our audience engaged, to keep them listening, to keep our performance interesting and also to convey the different thoughts and feelings that our character is going through, which we can all do through varying how we use our voice.

So on the screen here, I put six different vocal skills but I've scrambled them up.

So first of all, can you see if you've been unscramble these voice words? If you pause the video while you just have a go and see if you can write out the correct voice word with all the letters in the right order and then resume when you're ready, and we'll check your answers.

How did you do? So these are the six words which are all now written out correctly.

So they are pace, pause, volume, projection, pitch and tone.

So they are six very commonly used vocal skills.

So I'll just spend a few minutes now, just having a look at each one of those words and thinking about what they mean, before we then look at how we would use them.

I just put the definitions now with each of these vocal words on the screen, if it helps you, you are welcome to pause the video here and write down each definition, but you don't have to do that.

So pitch, first of all.

The pitch is how high or low your voice is.

So we all have a natural pitch of voice and the pitch of your voice will deepen as you get older.

But we can change our pitch in performance to convey certain thoughts or feelings.

For example, you might want to make your pitch higher, if you are frightened, excited, or scared, you may want to make your pitch lower, if you want to appear that you're in control or you're being authoritative or your shout to anger or being angry.

So the way we use our pitch would change depending on the emotion our character is feeling.

Pace then is a word for the speed of your voice.

You might also know this as a tempo.

So the pace can be fast, moderate or slow.

We should always make sure in performance, that our pace isn't too fast because sometimes, we can just speed up the way we speak because we're nervous.

But we need to control our pace but then we vary it as well.

If we want to convey that our character is really excited, that we might want to speed up our pace temporarily.

If we want to show that our character is thinking, we may want to slow down our pace to convey that.

So we can change pace at different times to show the different feelings and thoughts that the character is experiencing.

And then pause.

So pause is really important.

It's a brief stop during either a line or the end of a thought.

We also use pause to breathe because it's important in a performance that we stop to take a breath.

But we can add in more pauses to build tension or to show that we are struggling to get our words out or to show that we are thinking.

So pauses have lots and lots of different reasons and functions in performance.

So that are really the things that add in to a speech that you're making.

Three more now.

Let's look at tone, volume and projection.

So in drama, we call tone the way we use our voice to convey different emotions.

So the tone of voice.

So for example, you can have a calm tone.

You can have an angry tone.

You can have a loving tone.

You can have a caring tone.

You could have a positive commanding tone.

So tone is that different emotions that come through the voice when we speak in different ways.

So you would go through your monologue and look at how you can change your tone, depending on the message that you want to get across to your audience.

Volume is a word I'm sure we're all very familiar with and it's how loud or quiet your voice is.

If you were performing on a big stage, obviously, it's very important to always make sure your volume is loud enough.

But we can also vary volume for dramatic effect by sometimes lowering our volume and adding in what we call a stage whisper.

So it might be a quiet ballgame, but it's loud enough for the audience to hear, or we might want to raise our volume to make our points very clear if that's appropriate to our character.

So volume is something we can vary throughout our performance as well.

Moving on to our final voice word and this projection.

So we, as actors, should always be projecting our voice.

So to project our voices, we use something called a diaphragm, which is a sheet of muscle, which is attached to the bottom of your ribs.

And what that does is it helps air go in and out of your lungs.

And we use the diaphragm to push our voice out effectively and that's called projection.

So whilst you may not need to project for this performance if it's being filmed, or if it's taking place at home, normally in a theatre, it's very, very important to breathe properly project your voice out so that you're nice, aloud unclear.

So there are some six voice words, and I said, I would encourage you distribute it back over them if you're not sure what they mean.

Feel free to make a few notes on the definitions just to make sure you can use each voice words effectively.

And if you're ready, then we'll carry on.

Let's do a quick check there.

So what I've done here is put four voice words down but I've mixed up the definitions.

So what I'd like you to do is pause at this particular point, pause the video.

And then can you match up the correct definition please? So for this, you will need to write each voice word down the left-hand side and then write down the correct definition, please.

Because I've mixed up the order of the definitions here.

So take a few minutes just to do this task.

Pause the video and then resume to check your answers.

Here are the answers then.

Double check that you got pace is the speed of your speech, fast or slow.

Volume is how loud or quiet your voice is.

Tone is conveying emotions through your voice.

And pause is a brief stop during speech, breath or dramatic effect.

So just double check that you've got those voice word definitions correct.

And then we'll move on when you're ready.

So a really nice way which are used to remember the main vocal skills is by remembering PPPTV.

So I say to myself sometimes PPPTV.

And what that stands for is pitch, pace, pause, tone and volume.

So what I've not included there is projection and that's because we should always be projecting our voice.

But we should be remembering to change and vary and alter our pitch, pace, pause and volume throughout our performances.

So it might help you just to remember PPPTV.

So what I'd like you to do now then is apply the vocal skills that we've looked at to your monologue.

And I'm going to go through an example for you first.

Here is a little bit of text that for example, could have come from my character that I'd been showing you and working on over the last few lessons.

This is my character of Jess, who if you remember, has been living in the woods.

She's runaway from home, but Chris is trying to persuade her to go back to her parents.

And here's a little bit of that speech that might be from my monologue.

But what I need to do now is look at this and think how can I add in vocal skills to this? And a good way of doing this best of all is to try and read them out loud or also annotate them on your monologue.

So for example, on that first line, what am I doing here? I think that might be quite aggressive.

She doesn't like being questioned.

She feels quite defensive.

So that might come out through using an aggressive tone of voice.

So I might annotate that with an aggressive tone.

But then she might follow that up with being quite embarrassed.

"I live here, Chris." So that might come out with a quiet volume because she doesn't want to say it.

It's a bit embarrassing.

She maybe doesn't want him to really hear so I might follow my aggressive tone with a quiet volume.

My next thought might be to add in a loud volume because she's trying to convince him.

"It's quite warm with my sleeping bag." Might be quite loud because she's emphasising that point to try and convince him that she's just fine and that she's warm.

So I've added a loud volume to that line.

There's quite a lots of question marks in this section at the speech.

And they're all what we would call rhetorical questions that aren't going to be answered.

So when she says, "I manage, okay?" It's defensive.

So maybe reading between the lines, she steals food.

But she's not going to say that, but she's being defensive which means she's not allowing him in to really know what it is that she's she's doing.

So I have added that a defensive tone.

So there's an example of how I would go through the thought process if for every line thinking, how can I say this line using my vocal skills, pitch, pace, pause, tone, and volume.

And then I might make some notes, annotate it like I've done here.

And then I'll try that out and see if it works vocally and practically.

So I would like you now to do this task.

So just like I've shown you, I would like you to annotate your monologue with vocal skills.

So using the main vocal skills, which we've now called PPPTV.

Pitch, pace, pause, tone, and volume.

I would like you to annotate your speech, your monologue.

With the different ways, you can vary your voice to convey different emotions.

After that, it's really important that you read it out loud.

So give it a little bit of a performance just to yourself to see if your ideas work.

If you think that any of them don't work, particularly, then you can go back and change them because this is about a process of practising and polishing and seeing what works.

So annotate and then read it out loud and perform it.

Then just resume the video when you're ready.

So let's check at this point in the lesson that we understand how we can use these different vocal skills.

Around the screen is a statement.

Tone of voice is how high or low your voice is.

Is that true? Or is that false? It is false because tone is a different emotions in your voice.

Such as calm or angry.

High your low could refer to pitch or it could refer to volume, but it doesn't profess a tone.

All right.

So, that was a focus on vocal skills.

Let's now move on to a focus on body language.

So body language is how we use the body to convey our character and to express our thoughts and feelings of the character.

And we do this all the time in life we use body language.

So we are constantly communicating how we feel through our bodies.

And this is called non-verbal communication.

So without the words that come out of our mouth, we're always telling people how we feel.

Through how we hold our bodies and how we move our bodies through space.

So what I'd like to focus on four areas of body language, which I'm going to demonstrate for you and show you how we can convey different characters and emotions through using these areas.

And then you're going to have a go at this as well.

So the first area here is facial expressions.

So our faces is can be really expressive and we can vary our eyebrows and our mouth position, our eye positions to show our different emotions.

We've then got eye contact.

So eye contact is where we look to show who we are talking to or about, or how we feel.

We can make eye contact or we can choose not to make eye contact.

And both of those things can be very powerful.

We've also got our posture.

So posture is how you hold your body, whether it's upright and straight, whether it's sloped, whether it's open, whether it's closed.

So we can alter our posture to convey our character as well.

We've then got gesture.

So I make lots of hand gestures all the time but hand gestures are useful to indicating what we're talking about.

We can point, you know, we can gesture so ourselves but we can also show emotion through our gestures.

And we'll look at a couple of examples of that as well.

So I've just moved into a practical space where I have a bit more room now just to show you some examples of body language.

So the ones we've just talked about are facial expressions, eye contact, posture, and gestures.

Starting with posture because that's the overall shape of our bodies.

We can think about posture as being the alignment of our body.

If we think about our body in a straight line, my head to our toes.

A very straight posture would be our shoulders back, neck, just straight and relaxed.

Head facing straight forward, arms by our sides.

And then our shoulders in line with our hips, in line with our knees, in line with our toes.

So our feet are just facing forward.

Just show the width or hip width apart, just in a neutral stance.

And we would just call this a neutral posture.

So what you could do right now to stand up and just do this with me.

Shoulders back, neck straight, head just facing forward, arms by your side, hips just straight and facing forward, hips in line with your knees, in line with your toes, feet facing forward.

Just nice and neutral and relaxed.

If we can make any changes to our posture, it's immediately going to communicate something about our character.

So if I slump my shoulders, straight away, that tells us something else.

If I slant my neck to one side and slip my shoulders, that communicate something.

If I twist my hips, slouch my shoulders, drop my neck.

If I'm then having tonight crossed feet, I know you can't see my feet.

But one foot cross over the other.

Knees bent, hips slumped to one side, shoulder slumped.

This is now with every different slumped posture and it's been to communicate something totally different about by character.

Have a go at a slumped posture now.

Think about what kind of character that communicates.

Contrast that with our straight posture again and see how different that is in the body.

So posture is something straight away that we can change and show different aspects of the character, different emotions and moods.

So thinking that facial expressions, of course, we haven't made our faces all the time when we're talking but when we're playing a character isn't naturall us, we might need to apply some facial expressions if they're not there in the first place.

So with our face, we've got our brow, which can be raised or furrowed.

So our eyebrow line can show how we're feeling about a certain thing.

Whether we're surprised, whether we're confused.

Our eyes can be wide, can be narrowed.

Wide eyes might make you look excited, narrowed eyes might make you look suspicious.

And obviously that is working in conjunction with your brow.

The mouth can be wide, open, smiling neutral, gaping, down-turned.

So the mouth, as well is hugely expressive, when you're not talking to communicate certain emotions, thoughts and feelings of the character as well.

Gestures, what we do with our hands I'd be quite an animated person anyway.

So I'm always gesturing wildly around the room.

But we can think about specific gestures which can add something to your character.

Gestures can be useful in just making your storytelling clearer.

So for example, we can point to something or we can gesture something.

Or we can do certain things with our hands like fiddling.

This, for example, what does this look like? We combine that with facial expression.

If we combine that with a posture, this looks nervous, isn't it? So fiddling or, you know, using the hands, wringing the hands, this is.

Can communicate something about that character as well.

Think about the simple gesture of folding your arms. If I fold my arms with a very straight posture.

What does this look like? This is quite commanding, isn't it? Have a go at this.

Quite powerful.

So stand up straight, but then fold your arms. This is quite a powerful, commanding or fortitude posture.

Maybe it looks like a parent or a teacher.

What would happen if you now slumped your shoulders forward? What happened if you bent your knees? You suddenly look very different.

If you dropped your mouth and furrowed your brow and dropped your eyes.

So you now look like you're in pain maybe or you're tired or you're nervou, or you're shy.

So arms being folded can convey lots of different things as well about your character.

Thinking finally then about your eye contact.

Right now, I'm talking to you.

So I'm looking at you.

And the fact that I'm making eye contact shows that I'm engaged.

I'm confident, I'm talking to you.

This conversation is between us.

If I deliver this entire conversation whilst looking around the room, what would that convey about my character? It would maybe look like I'm not very interested or that something else is on my mind or that I'm a bit confused or distracted.

So if we look at the character we're speaking to, that conveys one thing.

If we look away, that conveys a different thing Eyes wondering which means you're looking around the space.

Kind of convey that you're thinking or that you're distracted.

If you dart your eyes, meaning you look very quickly and shift your eyes in different directions, what does that look like? You made me look suspicious or guilty or frightened.

If you lower your eyes, so the lack of eye contact completely conveys something else altogether, doesn't it? Suddenly you look guilty or like you're lying or very sad.

So eye contact or lack of eye contact is again, very important for you to think about in sense of what that confirms and conveys about your character.

So that's a good demonstration of those different areas of body language.

Let's now look at how you would put all those things together to convey some specific emotional states.

Okay, so what we've just seen is how do we can use all those different elements of body language to convey different characters to convey different emotions and feelings.

What I'd like you to do now is to have a go.

So on the screen, I've put three different emotional states.

Nervous, excited, and confident.

I would like you to pause the video, stand up and have a go at acting out each one, using your body language, facial expressions, gestures, and posture.

This is quite similar to still images, like I said, but now you can move around the space.

So feel free to walk up and down the space if you've got some room.

I'm thinking about how you walk as well to show this character of being nervous, excited, or confident.

So pause the video and then let's resume when you're ready.

And I'll go through these with you as well.

So for nervous, you may have had to go at a closed or hunched posture.

You may have had rounded shoulders.

Your eyes may have been darting about to not making very clear eye contact.

And maybe you use gestures to fidget with your hands and to show you were nervous.

They could be some ways of showing that you were nervous.

Being excited, it might be a very animated use of body language.

So you might have right raised eyebrows, wide eyes, wide smiled, open body language.

Very large gestures and maybe lots of movement in the body as well.

So they may be some ways that you show that you were excited.

And then being confident is about being very open to show that you are not scared and not afraid.

So this might've been a very open posture with your shoulders back.

Hands could have been on your hips perhaps.

Head tilted upwards and maybe direct eye contact.

So they are some examples of how you could have used body language skills to show those different emotional states.

If you did something very different than that's absolutely fine as well.

What you might want to do now, you can see the examples on the screen is pause the video again.

Just have a go acting out these particular ways of using the skills.

And then if you're ready, we'll move on.

So a task now, just as we did with vocal skills is to apply some body language skills to your monologue as well.

And let us do the same process of annotating your monologue.

So think carefully now about your character and about the emotions you want to convey throughout your performance.

And think about how you can move, how you can use the space, how you can use gestures, thinking all the time whether you're sat or stood and where you are in your performance.

Have a go at that.

Then perform it and read it through, see if it works.

And then we'll resume when you're ready.

So our final area to look at with our monologues is stage dissections.

So if you've looked at the script before, you may be very familiar with stage directions.

They give useful information for the actor about how to stay alive or where to move.

So they can be instructions for emotions and how the line should be said or there can be instructions for how to use a space and where and when to do things which the director or the writer really wants you to know.

So we normally write stage directions in brackets and in italic text.

And that would look something like this.

So you can see the word suspiciously.

The word guiltily, the words she turns away are all in brackets and italics.

And then Kayla exits stage left is the final stage direction in this particular script example.

So there's some examples here about how we might use the stage directions.

So adverbs, which you may know from English are a great way of explaining how you should say the line.

So do you want the lines to be sad, guiltily, quietly, sharply? So they might add extra information about how the line should come out.

We then added to ask speeches and stage directions, sound or lighting effect.

So with a big play and a big script, the writer might have had ideas about what the lighting should be at this moment, or what sound should be playing.

Not always, sometimes that decision is made by the director and the designers working on that show.

But sometimes, that information does come from the writer in the script.

So sometimes, we have told what we see or hear after seeing opens or it could be a new idea of a lighting or sound effects.

It's just thunder happening at that particular moment.

Stage directions also give us directions to move.

So they tell the actor to sit, stand, move or exit.

Also we could use stage directions to pick up certain items. If a scene is about a box, which is on a table and we really want this character to pick up that box, we might need to write that down as a stage direction.

Sometimes, we also have stage directions which are a description of sets and costume.

So what the sets or props should look like for the scene or what the character is wearing as they answer.

Again, as with sound or lighting effect, it doesn't always happen but some writers are quite prescriptive with what is written down in their scripts.

And we'd given all of this information.

The stage directions we would need to focus on today for our device monologues would be the adverbs and the directions to move.

So have a go now at adding in some stage directions to your monologue.

What this is doing is it's really encouraging those to polish this performance.

I'm really encouraging us to think about exactly how they should look in performance where we are going to move, how we're going to say certain lines.

Think about the vocal and physical skills you decided on.

You might want to add in some stage directions to help you remember these.

It's also always a good idea to plan movements.

So it's got purpose and it's got intention.

So if you want to sit or stand on a certain line, if you write that in, stage direction, is going to happen on that particular moment and it's going to have purpose each time.

So again, what I'd like you to do is when you've had to go, I think in some stage directions, then rehearse your monologue again.

Read it out loud with the stage direction.

So we're always putting this into practise.

We're always having to go practically and seeing if it works.

Take your time for this task and then we resume when you're finished.

So it's now rehearsal time.

We've done lots and lots of work this lesson already really polishing these performances.

Adding in vocal skills, adding in physical skills and adding in stage directions.

These started off as just something improvised from a picture.

So we've come a huge way and under lots and lots of work on this.

The time now is just to finish off our rehearsal process and get them ready to be a polished performance.

So perhaps, spend 10 to 15 minutes here incorporating all those features that we've worked on.

I've put three tips on the screen here for you.

Remember to vary your vocal skills.

Remember to have very clear and defined body language.

As you said, if you move, make that very purposeful and with intention.

And if you've written stage directions, now work to those stage directions and polish that so it's the same each time.

Another challenge for you is if you can learn your monologue.

See if you can perform it without the scripts that you wrote because if you've not got something in your hand, you might be able to give a much better and more engaging performance.

Support here whilst you take some time to rehearse your device monologue.

And then we'll resume when you're ready.

And now it's performance time.

So it's time to perform your finished piece.

If you can't at this stage, it might be nice to ask the parents or carer to film you so that you can watch your performance back afterwards.

That's optional, of course but it will just give you that extra opportunity to see back what you did and what it looked like.

So what I would like you to do is pause the video whilst you do a final performance and then resume just to complete some reflection questions.

At this point, it's completely up to you whether you want to gather a few extra items, any props or costume items you think might give your performance that extra edge, but the activity is just about you putting all of that vocal, physical and body language into practise, and then seeing how it all comes together.

So enjoy your performance and I'll see you when you're finished.

All right then, well done.

We've got the final performance.

So if you did film it, it might be a good idea now to watch it back and you could answer these reflection questions.

At the end of any process, it's always a great idea for our learning to just reflect on what we've done and celebrate what went well.

But then also think about if I was to do that again, would I do anything any differently? And there's just six questions on the screen for you to just reflect on if you've got some things to watch back from your performance.

If you didn't film it, again, you can just think about how that went and still consider if you were loud, clear enough, if you were engaged and then if there's anything that you would do differently next time.

And that is the end of our lesson and our unit.

So really, really well done.

You've done a huge amount of work in devising.

First of all, just starting off with an image.

Doing some really interesting character work where we developed character profiles, roles on the wall, improvising, scripting, developing a monologue from that devise process, and then taking that all the way to performance, to adding in vocal skills, physical skills and the stage directions.

So you've done a huge amount of learning and drama.

Really, really well done.

As I've said, if you'd like to share this work, do ask the parents or carer.

They could share your performance on Twitter.

They could tag @OakNnational and #LearnwithOak.

But really, really well done in all your drama work.

And I'll see you soon.

Bye.