Contact
SubscribeTeaching Theatre Terms
Teaching Theatre Terms for Personal Understanding
The following exercise is designed to teach acting students the basic terminology needed to begin character development through physical, vocal and emotional involvement.
Objectives-what you want
Tactics-what you do to get it
Physical action-blocking and business
Psychological-what you are thinking, feeling
(Being in the moment and details are important. Side coaching is good.)
Begin with the scenarios below and feel free to add alter in any way that you can think of for variety and connection for students. Talk about safety before you begin.
It is important that you let them do the activity for a while because generally the first few minutes or so are frantic and they only have one tactic. When you let them go for a while they get tired and start to try other tactics. It is very simple but really makes the terms clear and they can relate and understand them much better than just starting out with the terms. This activity personalizes the terms. Do not tell them the terms ahead of time or explain why you are doing the activity. Wait until after they have tried if for a while before introducing the terms so they don’t get lost in the words.
Scenario 1:
Actor 1 wants to turn the lights off
Actor 2 is afraid of the dark and will do anything to stop actor 1
Scenario 2:
Actor 1 and 2 want to take their shoes off because their feet hurt a lot
Actors 3 and 4 know the floor is full of horrible germs that could kill
Scenario 3:
Actors 1-3 want to leave the room
Remaining actors MUST get them to stay or the other actors will be killed
Discuss: (the details are important)
After each exercise start by just asking actors what they wanted and what they did to get it. Listen to what the student/actor says and let them be a guide to the discussion. If they try to use the theatre terms simply say “good but just tell me what you wanted in your own words”. Once they tell you what they wanted, say, “so that is your objective”. When they tell you what they tried to do to get it, explain “that is your tactic”. Keep introducing terms. Ask them what physical action they did to achieve their goal (objective). Finally ask them how they felt as they participated in the exercise. Then ask the questions below to make sure they have made the connection to the terms and understood them.
What was your objective? Encourage the students to just tell you what they wanted to accomplish instead of using the terms so everyone understands the personalization.
Tactics used? Again ask the student what they did to try to accomplish the above goal. Depending on the answer you can ask why they did it that way which gets into personality and choices we make to get what we want.
Physical actions? Ask what they did physically and why. This leads into a conversation about blocking and business.
Psychological actions? Ask them how they felt and what they were thinking.
I. Once you believe they understand the terms you can then move to using open scenes to further reinforce learning. By giving open scenes the students will now have text to work with to come up with their own objectives, tactics, physical action and psychological action. After the open scenes are performed have the other members of the class identify the terms. Students playing character A and B can correct as necessary.
Open scene example:
Character A: Hi
Character B: Hi
Character A: What are you doing?
Character B: Working on a project.
Character A: Will you help me with something?
Character B: When?
Character A: Just help me.
Character B: In a minute.
II. Then hand out a scene from a published contemporary play the students have read. Have students analyze and identify character objectives, tactics, physical action and psychological action.
By introducing the four terms initially through the first activity and then progressing to open scenes and published play excerpts students will create a personal connection with the terminology, which will provide a foundation for later learning.
