60-Minute Workshops for Stage 2
Shapeshifters
Playroom’s Shapeshifters workshop explores movement as a form of drama. Students learn how to use their bodies in creative ways to interpret a wide range of imagined situations, roles and emotions. Movement is seen as the launching point for creating strong and committed characters. We identify the features of strong characterisation and provide students and teachers with the vocabulary to talk about acting in the classroom.
Shapeshifters addresses outcomes DRAS2.1, DRAS2.3 and DRAS2.4.
On The Spot
On The Spot is Playroom’s improvisation masterclass. Guided by experienced improvisors, students are taught the basics of improvisation in a series of fun and fast-paced drama activities. Students take on a range of characters and develop an understanding of how their character contributes to the dramatic action. The Teaching Artists work in role with the students to explore characters such as wild animals, kings and queens, and fussy customers before using improvisation as a method of playbuilding to devise a short scene in small groups.
On The Spot addresses outcomes DRAS2.1, DRAS2.2 and DRAS2.3.
What Happens Next?
Tension is an essential element of drama. It sparks the audience’s desire to know ‘What Happens Next?’ In this workshop, Playroom identify the simple things storytellers do to build tension. Using Maurice Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are, students interpret the text in performance, taking on the roles of Max and the Monsters, and drawing focus to the source of the tension. Students learn the role tension plays in building dramatic action. They co-write and perform a “deleted scene” from the story with a nail-biting outcome.
What Happens Next? addresses Creative Arts outcomes DRAS2.1,
DRAS2.2 and DRAS2.4 and English outcomes EN2-OLC-01 and EN2-CWT-01.