Scope & Sequence: Reflection 2

MAY 2023

The best laid plans, eh? I was initially optimistic when I saw my schedule for the year. With how the class schedules aligned and hiring a new theatre teacher to my department, I would be teaching our Acting IV class for the first time. That meant senior students. It also meant a smaller group, hopefully more focused, hopefully more disciplined because after all, they’ve been through three years of acting classes to get here. What I did not take into account was two of those three years were during the height of the pandemic: virtual and hybrid learning. Across the board for every class (theatre or otherwise), positive habits had not been reinforced, the bar for expectations fell to an all-time low. However, in the middle of this turmoil, there seemed to be an opportunity.

This could be our best hope as a faculty to attempt a reset, not to naively return to how things were pre-COVID, but rather acknowledge the current state of the educational environment we find ourselves in while also re-establishing these academic and behavioral expectations for in-person learning. Our school kept an option open for students to select virtual learning, but those classes are self-paced and teachers were not responsible for preparing in-person and virtual options. We were able to redirect our focus to in-person classes, but I appreciated that we kept a few of the procedures established during our virtual learning period. Since students might need to be absent or quarantine for extended periods, we are still expected to keep all assignments posted to a Google Classroom (our school uses Google suite for everything), so even when students are absent, they are accountable and “I wasn’t here” is not as valid of an excuse, though I am always willing to aid students who might be going through a rough time or need a bit of grace extended to them. I try not to assume the worst when a student is not performing to expectation. I also saw an opportunity to develop more challenging lessons with more advanced students and a smaller roster compared to the Acting I class I had been teaching for the past couple years.

I am reflecting primarily on my Acting IV class as that is the class that received the lesson plans I created for my digital process portfolio. This year, I feel my cynicism is more active than usual when it comes to certain students. There are only eight of them. Not eighteen, just eight. So when one student is off-task or not following directions, it feels like ten. On the bright side, however, four or five of them usually perform well in most circumstances, give or take a day here or there. They are students who take the craft seriously and seem to enjoy the content of the lessons I teach. They created engaging, thoughtful “Self Concerts” (adapted from the DNA Play assignment from The Teaching of Acting); they effectively analyzed their monologues and the characters they played, delivering impressive performances. The other three or four students are quite the opposite, as I’ll further detail in the reflections for the acting and voice lesson plans; their Self Concert performance was fair to middling, at or below average. Their monologue showings were an embarrassing failure; I knew for certain they had not been using in-class rehearsal time at all, mostly refusing to work, and when it came time for the first showing, not only were they on book, it appeared as though they were reading their monologues aloud for the first or second time. Even before the showings during the selection process over one or two class periods, I underestimated just how far behind in their training they were and how much they had not retained in the virtual and hybrid years. At first, I instructed them to peruse my play collection and select a monologue only to discover not only were they struggling to read plays and comprehend the story, I had to actually define what a monologue even is for one of my difficult students. This felt like an absolute mess, especially for students who are (hopefully) about to graduate and either enter an undergraduate program for theatre, pursue professional acting, and so on. If their previous acting teachers had not failed them, the structure of their previous acting classes certainly did.

So where am I going with this? This cynical perspective on my Acting IV class seems to be the primary catalyst, the driving force behind structuring my utopian scope & sequence in this particular fashion. I identified three primary areas where students can gain mastery of acting while in high school: fundamental uses of the actor’s instruments, a history of theatre and how acting styles have evolved over millennia, and of course as comprehensive an exploration of the varied methodologies and techniques around acting as would fit in a year. I also used the current pathway structure of my current school as a basis for my program, but with some amendments based on my observations of the outcomes of each class. If units are mixed, such as following up improvisation or pantomime with Ancient Greek Theatre, I worry that students may feel overwhelmed, distracted, or confused. Then some routines and expectations start to slip. Maybe they throw up their hands and potentially give up acting altogether. So I decided on a more focused, immersive approach to each year of the program, based on daily class meetings for 45-60 minute periods.

The first year, the foundation, is key. Students in this program will spend their first year mastering their instrument, including ways it will change as students mature. Identifying roles in a theatre hierarchy, learning to support their fellow ensemble members, pantomime skills, vocal technique, and more vital aspects of acting will become second nature by the end of the first year. For the second and third years, continuing the same approach, I did not think it would be as effective if historical acting styles were taught in the same year as modern acting methods. Therefore, I decided the second year would be a journey through theatre history as students perform their way through the evolution of Western theatre. But along the way, they will discover how theatre and its origins in ritual storytelling exist outside a European focus. Sure, they would study Ancient Greek tragedy, but they will also analyze and perform styles from Japan, India, North American Indigenous Peoples, and West African Griot traditions, all leading to contemporary plays and playwrights that students could perform with greater appreciation and a more thorough understanding of how theatre of the 21st century developed.

With ingrained acting habits and a firm understanding of how theatre evolved the way it did, only then would I introduce all these methods and techniques that have been developed largely over the past century for how to act in contemporary theatre. Students could easily spend at least an entire year on just one of these methods alone, so I found it difficult to choose just one. Students respond to techniques differently; Meisner wouldn’t necessarily work for someone that identifies more with Chekhov. And they will discover there is more than one correct way to portray a character. After surveying these methods & techniques, I thought it would be beneficial to add a fourth year as a capstone, performing one-act plays in the first semester that incorporate principles from the previous three years, then spending students’ final semester preparing students to enter the business of professional theatre. This capstone, secured atop three solid years of educational construction, will complete the Gateway to Acting, through which a student can chart any path to their university and/or career destination with the tools and abilities they have mastered for acting in live theatre.