ENG 4140 DMWA
GROUP WORK
SCENE STUDY VIDEO/ORAL PRESENTATION/BLOG
Each of you will take part in a collaborative fifteen-minute oral presentation that comprises three different but related activities. The goal of this assignment is to experience the plays from multiple perspectives, both as an actor and as a critic. These interrelated activities account for approximately 15% of your final grade.
A. The first step in your preparation is to spend time reading and rehearsing the scene among yourselves. I have selected a series of scenes crucial to the development of the play in question, with an indication of how many roles are involved in each of the scenes. Most of them call for three or four actors. You may divide the lines among yourselves as you prefer. For the actual performance video, you will have to decide as a group how to handle the direction and videotaping.
After reviewing the Guidelines for Preparing and Taping your Scene Study (see below), rehearse a dramatic reading of the scene and then record it. This taped session should be completed a few days before your presentation in class is to occur. The scene study must be uploaded to our course blog two days before the oral presentation is scheduled for critique and discussion by the class. (We will devote part of an early class session to modeling how this scene study should be approached. Samples from the last two years are available for your review. You will also receive explicit directions for working on the blog.)
B. To the class, you will make a team presentation about a scene or scenes from one of the plays that we are reading together this semester. In doing so, you will be responding to questions that are raised in the assignments below. The oral presenters’ job is to respond as critics and to teach the material to the rest of the class: that means deciding what seems most difficult and most important and therefore most worthy of detailed attention.
C. As a group, you will then write and upload a self-critique. Be sure to explain what new insights you discovered through the process of speaking the words out loud and interacting with other speakers. Each group critique should include a couple of links to materials on the Web that shed further light on the scene.
Everyone in the class will be asked to evaluate the work and make a comment on the blog; I will assign a formal grade in consultation with the presenters, based on a review of student comments and the work completed by the group members.
Guidelines for Preparing and Taping your Scene Study
How to proceed: This work should be completed two days BEFORE your oral presentation is scheduled.
On your own: read the scene over several times. READ IT OUT LOUD. Do you understand all the words? Look up any vocabulary words that need attention.
Think about the speakers’ thought patterns. Are they relentlessly focused? Do they change subjects in mid-stream?
Do the speakers use any figurative images? If so, what does their choice of words suggest?
What kind of personality does each speaker seem to have? What does each speaker want to achieve in this conversation? What do the speakers want from/ expect from/ need from each other? WHO WILL YOU BE? Start to internalize your character’s feelings.
Choose a single prop that you think will enhance the audience’s experience of the scene: it can be related to costume, something to hold in your hand, something to have in the background.
Working together: Begin by reading the scene on your own, and then when you meet, read the scene together, out loud. Discuss the questions in the assignment and offer your opinions, based on your prior study.
Rehearse a couple of times. You may have memorized the lines already. See if you can look at each other instead of at the book. Try to make the script feel like a spontaneous conversation that you’re having with each other. LISTEN TO EACH OTHER; don’t follow what your partner is saying in the book.
Recording and uploading the scene: Decide how you will move so that you express your character’s experience physically as well as verbally. Try to find a good setting in which to act your scene and be sure to include one or two appropriate props. For the video, if you haven’t been able to memorize your lines, at least read the scene with as much freedom from the text as you can.
Preparing for in-class presentation: After you’ve taped your scene, talk about what you’ve learned together and try to define what a good actor does in preparing a role. Reflect on the questions posed for your in-class discussion and organize your presentation so that you cover everything you want to say. You need to work well together as a team.
