Activity 1: Warm-ups to Introduce the Melodramatic Style
Warm-up 1: Tell me if you love me!
One player volunteers to be the challenger. All players stand in a circle and the challenger stands in front of one player trying to break his/her concentration by saying the line “Darling, if you love me, won’t you please, please smile?” Player responds with an unchanging expression saying the line “Darling, you know I love you, but I just can’t smile.” If the Player smiles or laughs, breaking concentration, then he or she becomes the challenger. Note: Touching the Player being challenged should be prohibited in this game; however, students should be encouraged to use creative and/or “melodramatic” gestures to try to break their partner’s concentration.
Warm-up 2: Atom with Words and Music.
Students walk around the room in a neutral walk as music plays. Periodically, teacher calls “Atom 5” or another number and students must form groups of 5, with extra players forming the “nucleus” of the atom. When groups form, call out words, phrases, titles or emotions that students must create using tableaux. Then, dissolve the tableaux and begin again. Ask students as they walk around the space to listen to the music and incorporate melodramatic or “big” gestures in their walks.
- Possible Word/Theme Prompts for Atom: Love, honour, dishonesty, secrets, gossip, scandal, betrayal.
- Possible Dialogue Prompts: “Never again!” “That will be the end of you!” “Not if I have anything to do about it!” “Why would you treat me this way?” “But I thought you loved me!”
- Possible Title Prompts: “Time to Say Goodbye” “The Moonshiner’s Daughter” “Peril in the Paddock” “No Time for Tears” “The Pursuit” “A Woman Betrayed”
Activity 2: Silent Film Video Clip - Viewing and Discussion
- Show a clip of a short silent film that shows heroes and villains. Explain that in Melodrama, the actors of the time were given specific training. They learned how to speak, walk, dress, and use certain facial expressions in order to perform as a particular character type.
- Inform students that Melodrama was a theatrical style popular throughout North America in the 1800s. The plays contain tales of good vs. evil. The hero and heroine are very good and pure of intent. The villains are bad, merciless, and evil. The style of acting typically used in Melodrama is very exaggerated and showy. Actors in the 1800s were trained in the classical style, which meant that they were given a set of movements to express certain emotions. The audiences could easily understand these movements; even if they did not understand the verbal language, they could interpret the body language. Model a few of the movements described in Activity 3 and have the students copy them. Have them guess what emotion is being expressed.
After seeing the video clip, ask students these Key Questions:
- How are characters are portrayed in silent films?
- How does the audience recognize the hero or heroine and the villain? How do the characters show emotions?
- How does this style seem different than acting style we see today in the theatre or in movies?
- Where do you find these kinds of stock characters or stereotypes in television shows? (i.e. soap operas)
Activity 3: Changing Mirrors - Melodrama Actors: Practice Reflected
- The purpose of this exercise is to physicalize exaggerated conventions of the melodramatic acting style.
- Students find a partner and assign roles A and B. All students assemble in two concentric circles, A’s on the outside and B’s on the inside. A is the actor B is the actor’s mirrored reflection.
- With each new emotion, roles are reflected back and forth between the players (i.e. B becomes the actor and A the reflection). Students switch partners by moving the outside circle of A’s only to the left and having the inside circle B’s remain in the same place.
- Call out the following movements for A to create and B to copy. You may also choose to provide a reason for creating these emotions (such as, you’ve just caught a glimpse of the most beautiful woman in the world!)
- Love Expressed (Male): Hold the chest high, with the right hand resting on the upper left over the heart. Then open out arm to the right and gesture towards the loved one.
- Love Expressed (Female): Hold the chest high, angle the head a bit to the side. Put opposite leg out with foot pointed, hands under the chin, fingers entwined and bent at the first and second knuckles (almost praying). Gesture hands towards the loved one. Smile with a large grin.
- Villain Evil Planning: Raise one eyebrow up, the other down, grimace on the face and rub hands together. Twiddle the fingers to show that it is a really good plan.
- Villain Evil Sneaking: Hunch shoulders over, raise arm to cover the nose and move the arm on down, shift eyes around the room.
- Pride: Raise chest up, put hands with knuckles on both hips. Stand with legs about one foot apart to create a balanced look.
- Anger: Clench fists of both hands and raise them shoulder high. Push eyebrows pushed toward each other, tense face with a grimace.
- Overwhelmed: Raise chin up bringing the face to look up, drop one arm limp to the side, open the other hand with palm towards the audience on the top of the forehead.
- Grief: Put your head down, round your shoulders, cup you face with your hands. Raise your shoulders up and down, make a loud sobbing noise
- Fear: Turn your face to the right side, with the right hand to the mouth, fingers curled under touching the top of the palm.
- Horror: Widen eyes as far as possible open your mouth, put both hands to the cheeks with the fingers extended.
- Fortitude: Place your body straight, chest up. Hold your hand to your forehead, with the palms facing the audience and fingers curled slightly.
Follow-up Discussion:
After practicing the movements above ask students how they felt creating these conventions.
- Which convention did you like creating best?
- Which convention most resembled the way you would actually express that emotion?
- Did you prefer being the mirror or the reflection?
- Did you have the urge to laugh during the exercise? Why or why not?
Activity 4: The Silent Episode
- Introduce the idea of a “silent episode” told only with stage pictures (you may wish to show a clip from a silent film as a model). Review the elements of tableaux, such as facial expression, focal point, levels, etc.
- Group students into groups of three and assign roles A, B and C. Give them this simple episode for three characters (these instructions can be written on the blackboard or on cue cards).
Characters’ Intentions:
A: Villain wants to impress heroine. He wants to steal heroine’s miniature portrait of her hero so that she will forget him.
B: Hero wants to protect heroine from harm from the evil villain.
C: Heroine wants to paint a portrait of her hero so that she can always have it with her
Order of Tableaux:
First tableau: Villain jealously watches hero and heroine together in the garden as they moon over each other while she paints a miniature portrait of him in her sketchbook.
Second tableau: Villain watches as hero admires her painting and tells her to keep it forever in her purse. Hero exits, leaving her in the garden alone.
Third tableau: Villain plans evil.
Fourth tableau: Villain pretends he is an art dealer and offers a huge sum of money for the portrait, promising to make her a famous artist.
Fifth tableau: Heroine believes him and thinks she can paint another one.
Sixth Tableau: Hero discovers the plan and grabs the portrait back from the villain. Seventh Tableau: Hero pushes the villain into the river. Good conquers evil.
Eighth Tableau: Hero proposes marriage to heroine.
- Have students join all the tableaux with slow motion exaggerated movement between tableaux.
- Add the sound track of a silent film and speed up the movement to fast motion.
- Have some groups share their episodes with the class.
Activity 5: Reflection
- Ask the students how they felt exaggerating gestures in their Melodramas. Did it feel unnatural or silly? How did it look from the spectator’s point of view?
- Ask them if they experienced any tensions between performing the strong emotions and wanting to laugh. Why do you think we find Melodrama so comical in this day and age? Would audiences during the 1800s have laughed at Melodrama?
- Ask them how the speeded up action contributed to the comic effect.
- Ask them how, as audience, the moments of performance they enjoyed and why.
- Students brainstorm a list of emotions not listed in Activity 3, individually or in a small group. Students pick an emotion from their lists and create new silent episodes, writing a short description of how they will tell their stories in five Tableaux. Give students time to create their tableaux for the class.
Activity 6: A New Emotion
Questions for Discussion/Journal Reflection:
- Reflect on how stereotypes of men and women may have grown out of the conventions of Melodrama. Do you feel that men and woman are portrayed stereotypically in Melodrama?
- How might we look at present day stereotypical gestures in today’s world? How do we show some of the same emotions in gestures? For example, how are adolescents, men or women stereotyped in society?
- Ask students if they can explain how a film like Superman contains some Melodramatic conventions.
- Ask students what it means if someone says ”you are being melodramatic!”
Activities for Further Exploration of Melodrama:
- Viewing Exercise: Show a film clip from Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a Charlie Chaplin film or a modern-day soap opera. While they watch, students should write down the examples they see of the Melodramatic style in the films, such as stock characters, exaggerated gestures, stock story lines, themes of good and evil and happy endings.
- Fairy Tales as Melodrama: Find a simple fairy tale that students know well, such as Jack and the Beanstock or Little Red Riding Hood. Students, in groups of 5, retell it by acting it out in the melodramatic style.
- Silent Episodes in a Contemporary Context: Students revisit their “silent episodes” and put them in a contemporary context. How would your gestures, body language and style of speech be adapted to a modern context? Students present their “present-day” silent episodes to the class. How do these scenes differ from those performed in the Melodramatic style? Which style do you prefer watching and why?
- At this point, the teacher may wish to move into “Learning from the Past” Part Two: Exploring the Style of Commedia dell’Arte. The final culminating task for this lesson is based on both the style of Melodrama and Commedia dell’Arte.