You can mix and match the activities as you see fit. (Depending on the students’ prior experience of physical theatre, you may wish to shorten or extend the first few activities.) This plan works well as a general introduction to devising from stimulus for KS3/4 groups.
Warm up (10–15 mins)
Using some music with a consistent beat, ask the students to move around the space following your ‘stop’; ‘go’; ‘clap’; ‘jump’ instructions. These can be reversed for playfulness. Then, slowly introduce other commands:
- ‘Change’ = change direction
- ‘Sneak’ = move as though you are creeping out of the house trying to not wake anyone
- ‘Model’ = strike a model pose from a catalogue
- ‘Dance like a dad’ = well, dance like a dad!
- ‘Clear’ = run as fast as you can to the sides of the room
- ‘Penguins’ = huddle like penguins in the middle
- ‘Assembly’ = gather at the front of the room, in rows, like a primary school assembly
- ‘Shake hands’ = shake as many hands as possible
This will serve as a dynamic warm up, and a light touch on ‘physical theatre’.
Engaging (10–15 mins)
Introduce the idea of physical theatre and define. Explain these two distinctions:
- Body as prop/object
- Telling a story through movement
In small groups of four or five, give students one minute to make certain props/objects using only their bodies. You can start simply with shapes and letters, then move onto more interesting challenges such as a church, washing machines and beans on toast!
You need to build up to creating these four ‘body as prop’ images:
- Sad clock at 5 am
- A bedroom door silently opening
- Staircase with banister
- A key turning in a lock
And add more abstract, ‘Telling a story through movement’ challenges:
- A moment of freedom
- Feeling trapped
Check in with the group and review the understanding of physical theatre and its distinctions.
Discussion
Play the song up to the first chorus and discuss lyrics (see resources). What is happening? What do we know? What do we need to know? What characters are there? Explain we will be using this song's story as stimulus for making our drama.
Development
Play the song a few times and ask students to practise moving through their four images from the last task in time with the music. They should find imaginative ways (transitions) of moving from image to image. Once they have got that looking smooth, you can introduce some variations and freedoms. Create other images and movements to fill out the sequence such as: the moment she leaves the letter; her walking down the stairs; or the moment of freedom. Give the students some features of movement to experiment with, for example: that there must be interesting transitions and levels; fast and slow moments.
Development with dialogue/narration (10–15 mins)
Treat the lyrics (below) as dialogue for narration and role play, assign a narrator and characters, then give students time to stage and perform.
Narrator
Father snores as his wife gets into her dressing gown
Picks up the letter that's lying there Standing alone at the top of the stairs She breaks down and cries to her husband
Mum
Daddy, our baby's gone.
Why would she treat us so thoughtlessly?
How could she do this to me?
Dad
We gave her most of our lives
sacrificed most of our lives
we gave her everything money could buy
Development with writing original script
Give each student some paper and a pen, listen to the song again, and then ask students to write the letter that the girl has left. Remember she had hoped the note ‘would say more’; so, limit them to five-to-ten lines, and consider the idea of not revealing everything in the note. Once you have generated this material, you essentially have some original script to use. Share some examples together, if you wish, or work in pairs or groups to edit/refine the raw material. You could mix up the writings and hand out to random groups, or take the best line from each. Either way, ask groups to stage a scene where the parents are reading the letter, and the girl speaks the words.
Development – cross cutting
In writing the letters the students will have begun to consider why the girl is leaving home, what might have happened in the past, and where things might go in the future. Using the technique cross cutting, ask students to stage flash back or flash forward scenes revealing more of the story. For example, past arguments with parents; planning her departure with someone; where she goes after she has left. These scenes can be portrayed as physical theatre, to music, or as role play with dialogue.
She's Leaving Home – lyrics (excerpt)
Wednesday morning at five o’clock
As the day begins
Silently closing her bedroom door
Leaving the note that she hoped would say more
She goes down the stairs to the kitchen Clutching her handkerchief
Quietly turning the backdoor key Stepping outside, she is free
She, … (we gave her most of our lives)
Is leaving (sacrified most of our lives)
Home (we gave her everything money could buy)
Father snores as his wife gets into her dressing gown
Picks up the letter that's lying there
Standing alone at the top of the stairs
She breaks down and cries to her husband
Daddy, our baby's gone.
Why would she treat us so thoughtlessly?
How could she do this to me?
Something inside, that was always denied, for so many years. She's leaving home.