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Recipe Book Menu:

Writing Pronpts

Performance Exercises

Exploring the Text

Improvisation

Language: Sounds, Structure, Meter

Live Performance Analysis

Warm-up Exercises

Voice and Body Exercises

Visual Materials

Video and Film Analysis

 


Writing Prompts

Graffiti Exercise
Understanding the Effect of Musical Choices
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Performance Exercises

Kneelings, Pardons, and Other Actions: Charting Options in Act 5 of Measure for Measure
As You Like It: Playing the Possibilities
Their Exits and Their Entrances
What Does a Stage Property Do? The Interplay of Text and Prop in 1.1 of A Midsummer Night's Dream
Reverse Interpretations of a Scene
Contextualizing Racist Language
Paraphrase Pull-Push
Parallel Scenarios
Staging the Murder of Banquo
Melodrama
Performance Activity: Measure for Measure 2.3
Interrogating the Director
Do It!
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Exploring the Text

The 'Drop In' Text Exploration Exercise
Picturing the Words
Detective Story
Using the Quarto Texts for Discussion/Written Assignments
The Research Team
Have I Scene You Before?
Graphing Dramatic Structure: Characters and Stage Time
Casting the Play
Throwing Your Line
Isolating Word Types
Finding the Breaks
Word Work
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Improvisation

The Mirror Game
Justification
Imagined Activities
Imagination
Fantasy
The Cross Walk
Concentration
Cavepersoning
The Telephone Call
The Honey Walk
The Family Feud
The Elevator
Real & Imagined Activities
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Language: Sounds, Structure, Meter

Ghost Story
Assigning Stress
Sound of a Sonnet
Moving with the Rhythm
"Jazzing the Pentameter" or "Rapping the Meter"
Isolating Word Types
Iambic Walk
Finding the Breaks
Birthday in Blank Verse
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Live Performance Analysis

Staging: Elaborate vs. Minimalist
One-page Written Response
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Warm-up Exercises

Zip-Zap-Pow
Ways of Walking
Team Recital
Soliloquy Freeze Tag
Variation on "Passing the Energy"
The Name Game
Circle Names
Circle Backrub
Body Sound
Back-to-Back
Walk Around
Oooh-Aaah
Murderer
Indian Chief
Contract & Release
Body Swings
Arm Throw
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Voice and Body Exercises

The Eyes Have It
A Good Defense
Advances and Retreats
So Inclined
Whispered Monologues
Throwing Your Line
The Prayer Stretch
The Hum
Painting with the Breath
The Chair Throw
The Bear-Hug
The Air Pump
Strengthening
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Visual Materials

Picturing the Moment
Storyboarding
Designing a Production
Designing Fairies
Character Objects
Character Collage
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Video and Film Analysis

Shakespearean Theatre Vocabulary: Darkness, Ghosts and Vanishing
Introduction to Theatre Vocabulary and Stage Conventions
Hooray Henry
Comparing Film To Play Narratives: Otello and Othello
"Prayer Scene" from Hamlet
Framing The Taming of the Shrew
Comedy and Tragedy
Closure and Endings in Shakespearean Comedy
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