Gary Carkin's ESL/EFL Drama Log

Home | ESL/EFL Drama in Poland | The London School of Language and Drama | Alexis Gerard Finger | Julie O'Sullivan and Duchess County Community College | Julie O'Sullivan's Class | Julie O'Sullivan's Class -- Part Two | Julie's Class -- Part Three -- Work on the Plays | Christine Parkhurst and the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences | George Plautz and Drama at ELI, University of Utah | George Plautz -- Part Two -- The Performance | Video Clips | Nicole Kupfer | Nicole Kupfer's Approach | The Color of Life -- Scenes One -Three | The Color of Life -- Scenes Four and Five | The Process of Play Production and Language Acquisition | Gluing the Parts Together -- Working the Language | DE or Dramatic English | Stephanie Fuller and Hong Kong's Dramatic English | Stephanie at DE continued | Stephen Rhind's Class/ DRAMATIC ENGLISH | Improvised Drama | Improvised Drama 2 | Scripted Drama | Scripted Drama (cont'd) | About Me | A comedy performed by the International Drama Club at SNHU | The Princess and the Pea | Favorite Links | Let's interact: visit my BLOG
Nicole Kupfer's Approach

With all the attributes of excellent facilities, equipment, and talent at her disposal, Nicole is able to bring together the diverse elements of playmaking, movement, and music to support her work with language. Her approach is one of empowerment. She proposes ideas and lets her students negotiate, discuss, and come to their own decisions. She acts as a resource and a guide while they build from the support of her guidance and their own collaborative effort.

Thus, to prepare for an all-school festivity called Serenade where each class or group of classes performs for an audience of parents toward the end of the school year, Nicole has proposed that the class's presentation incorporate color and that the theme be based upon on object: a hat.
A hat is passed around and the students must decide who the hat belongs to, what was the interesting thing about it, its past and its future. With these instructions as a beginning, the class is divided into four groups. Each group starts with a line and then the scripts are passed to the next group to write more. The exercise is included here in full below.
 
Developing a Script
 
Task One
 
An object is passed around the circle. The pupils have to guess what the story behind the object could be: Is it magic or ordinary? Who did it belong to? Is there a story behind it?
 
Task Two:
 
In small groups, we work out a possible story about the object.
 
Task Three:
 
In the whole group, we agree on one story and decide on a beginning, a middle, and an end. The teacher writes down on a big piece of paper:
1. the plot of each scene
2. the characters and their names
3. locations/scenes
 
Task Four:
 
In groups (G W 4) (as many groups as there are scenes), each person writes down one line spoken by any person in the scene assigned to the group. The teacher has handed out narrow slips of paper to write the lines on. The name of the character must be on it, but the group shouldn't discuss what they are writing.
 
Task Five:
 
The slips of paper are passed on to the next group. The lines are ordered and one line is added to each one. The lines can also be reordered. Before they are passed on, they are numbered.
 
Task Six:
 
Process 5 is repeated with 3 additional lines. Ideally, the lines are passed around many times until they reach the first group again. Then, the group can start writing the manuscript. (The teacher provides paper that is clipped to cardboard.)
 
Task Seven:
 
Performance: the scenes are read out.
(Somewhere along the line, a title can be chosen.)
 
Variation: More lines can be added, stage directions can be included (also concerning the tone of vioce, facial or vocal expression, etc.)
 
___________________________________________________________
 
The scripts resulting from the first round are shown below. Please click on each file.
 
 
 
 

Click here for story one

Click here for story two

Click here for story three



The writing of these scripts entails work with character, vocabulary that serves character, plot development, and language that needs to be delivered with grammatic prescision. What more organic way is there to develop knowledge about appropriate vocabulary and its proper use and function?
 
The writing of each piece serves also another purpose. Through each piece shines the specific focus of each group. As we read, we glimpse the spirit of each group and each is a little different. The spirit of each needs to be maintained as the students work toward a final, single manuscript.

Click here to turn to the beginning scenes of The Color of Life