One Week Residency

In this project students will learn how to see posture and movement in a new way, both their own and others! They will come to understand our intuitive ability to understand what people mean just by the way they stand, sit, or walk.

More, they will harness this ability in order to make real theater pieces using masks and mime. They will improvise and cavort while cultivating the special skills of concentration and presence unique to Physical Theater. They will learn how to become another character, the moon, a cubic foot of fog, an elephant, a tree, or a washing machine. To climb stairs that aren't there, to lean on a non-existent wall, and to walk a mile without moving an inch!

We will be using theater masks from Eliot's collection as well as sme simple masks that will be made by the students themselves.

Finally, the students will join Eliot in an assembly for the whole school.

The classroom teacher is asked to stay in the classroom during the session, and is invited to take part in all the fun!

Students will learn some basic categories of gesture and movement and apply them to themselves and to one another.

Activity: Sitting, walking, and performing simple gestures in games of observation, with varied emotions and qualities of character

Objectives: 1) Learn to pay attention to how we make conclusions about what people are feeling and what they are like.
2) Recognize some of one's own body language (maybe unrecognized till now)

            gesture                         feeling quality
            body language              read (as in, 'read' the meaning of a gesture)
            physicalize                    mood

Students will learn how to handle a theater mask as well as some First Principles of
Mask Characterization.

Activity: Using the Artist's stage masks, students will play a variety of games in which they try to find the body language that will make each mask "come alive." This includes simple solo, duet, and trio performing exercises before the class.

Objectives: 1) Learn how to treat masks with care and respect.
2) Learn how to read a mask to unlock its emotive power.
3) Begin to understand the formal relationship of audience and performer, what is expected from each, and how to get and keep attention.

            focus                     stage presence
weight, direction, & speed (of movement)
the reveal        blur
economy               stutter (gestural)
character mask                 larval mask

In this session, students further develop skills acquired in Sessions 1 and 2, by applying them to the exploration of animal movements.

Activity: Students will be given a graded series of exercises and games aiming at the recreation of animal movements through concentration, sense memory, and discovery in one's own body of the elements of movement of varied animals. These include guessing games and hilarious improv exercises involving character types based on animals. Some animal masks will be used.

Objectives: 1) Students will learn to mimic and to hold physical postures and attitudes.
2) Students will learn to observe movement styles and to recreate them through sense memory.
3) Students will learn to concentrate on a fixed motif while performing a distracting exercise. (The theatrical equivalent of rubbing your belly and patting your head.)

Students will play with some of the different qualities of stillness and movement and experience the fun and fascination of concentration in a theatrical setting. Students will also make simple, original masks with Artist's templates.

Activity: With and without the Neutral Mask, students will play theater games focusing on group concentration and on individual concentration. These include games of movement where team members must sensitively coordinate their movement, and exercises for individuals to focus strongly on a dramatic goal in front of an audience. Students will also make and use simple cardboard-and-crayon masks.

Objectives: 1) Students will learn some ways of using the power of silence and stillness to fascinate an audience.
       2) Students will learn how to watch their onstage partners to coordinate movement.
       3) Using the Neutral Mask, students will learn more about their own body language and what it conveys to people even when they don't intend it!
       4) Students will learn some of the the fundamental requirements of mask design.

            neutral                      stage picture
(gestural) attitude       peripheral vision
double take               sequence

Consolidating stage, movement, concentration, and characterization skills of previous sessions, students will learn some fundamental skills of pantomime.

Activity: Lessons and drills in the classical illusions of the wall, rope, pushing, leaning, etc., alternate with exercises employing these skills, little performances for one another that are simple fun.

Objectives: 1) Students will learn to perform some basic pantomime illusions.
2) Students will begin to get ideas for solo and ensemble performance material.
3) Students will practice and improve fundamental performance skills.

            pantomime                    succession
lean                              fixed point
isolation                      clic
manipulation                 illusion

Students will play some new games with illusionary mime, and they will make up and perform sketches using Figuration Mime, in which people themselves become stage objects!

Activity: Students will first do exercises in which they transform everyday objects into other, imagined objects. Then they will transform themselves into objects, by themselves (in performance for the class) and then in small groups. Finally, the class will divide into groups, each of which will prepare and perform a brief Figuration Mime piece with masked protagonists.

Objectives: 1) Students will learn the basic techniques and conceptsof Figuration Mime.
2) Students will learn, through trial and error, with Artist's guidance and input, some methods of putting together a piece through group process.

immobility transition
sound effect mechanical (movement style)
throw, take, give focus

Students will prepare informal performance pieces from favorite moments of the past sessions, to be a part of the Culminating Event.

Activity: Students will recall and discuss favorite exercises, games, and moments of perfomance from past sessions. With close supervision and guidance in selection by the Artist, the class will plan a program for a school assembly presentation. Then the class will run through the group games that will function as performance pieces, and small groups and soloists will rehearse their sketches and vignettes.

Objectives: 1) Students will learn in a practical, hands-on way, what it is like to conceive and plan a performance.
2) Students will learn to observe and control their own movement as performers in regard of an audience.
3) Students will learn some rehearsal methods of ensemble physicval theater.

Students will join the Artist onstage at appointed times to demonstrate group exercises and to perform vignettes and sketches. (Besides being interlocutor, Artist will also do some solo demonstrations and explanations of our field of study.)

Objectives: 1) Students will learn in an indispensibly objective way the real meaning of performance in physical theater--with all its joys and terrors!
2) Students will gain actual experience of the necessity of concentration, consistency, and teamwork in the preparation and execution of performance.