Hello.

I'm Mrs. Bradley.

Welcome back to your drama lesson.

This is lesson number three in the scheme of work devising from an image: narrative approaches.

In this lesson, we're going to continue to develop our piece of devised drama.

So if you're ready let's have a look at what you'll need today.

In this lesson, you'll need a pen, an exercise book, notebook, or paper to write on and a bit of space to work in because today, again, we are going to be doing some practical tasks.

So I'm wearing some comfortable clothes to move in.

You might just want to make sure you are wearing something comfortable and that you've got a little bits of space around you to move around in.

Perhaps just the space that allows you to stretch out your arms to either side that would be absolutely fine.

When you're ready then, let's get started.

So looking at what we're going to do today you've hopefully now done the intro quiz already, which were the recap to some of your prior learning.

We will go back over what we did last lesson, just to make sure we've remembered.

Then we're going to do some improvising and we're going to look at improvising a monologue based on your character journeys from last lesson.

After that, we'll try and develop the monologues by adding in some more devising techniques, which we'll learn about today.

We'll then make sure we've got a record of our monologue and we will write them down.

So that gives us a little bit of a script to work on in the next lesson.

After that there'll be an exit quiz where we'll just check on your learning from today.

So let's look at some key words that we'll use in this lesson.

We'll be improvising today.

So improvisation is when we act without planning or preparation, and there is no script.

We'll also be breaking the fourth wall.

And that means when we speak directly to the audience.

We'll also added a new technique today and that is thought tracking.

This is when we step out of a scene and speak the character's thoughts to the audience.

So last lesson, if you remember we've been looking at this image for a couple of lessons now.

In the first lesson, we used this as our stimulus with this piece of devising.

And then last lesson, we developed a character from the narrative, which was then based on this image.

We focused on one character and we use various character development techniques, such as a character journey, an emotion graph, a role on the wall, and a character questionnaire.

That helped us make a three-dimensional character.

All that really good character work will then help us today when we start to improvise and act out of this character.

So what we would like to do now is I'd like you to choose one scene from your device narrative, which you can now create a performance from.

So to do this, you might want to look back at the work that you did in lesson one where you plotted out your story, your narrative from start to finish.

Zoom in now on one scene for the character that you're going to play and we are going to improvise a scene for that character.

When you've chosen your scene that you can work on we'll carry on.

Here's a rundown of what we'll do with this character and this scene.

So first of all, it helps us to plot out the scene.

That doesn't mean we write it and script it, but it means we make a brief plot, a summary, of what we want to achieve in the scene and what the scene will cover.

And that helps make sure our improvise station is then purposeful and has some intention behind it.

So after we've plotted out the scene we will then improvise a monologue.

So we've introduced the word improvisation today.

A monologue is a speech by one person.

Because we are doing a solo dividing project you will improvise a speech from your character that would take place in one of your scenes.

When we have used our improvisation skills we'll then spend some time refining the monologue.

And to do that, we'll add in some more devising techniques.

After that, towards the end of the lesson, we'll script the monologue and that will help us refine what we've done.

Get it down on paper to use again next lesson.

But also we will then review our progress.

So pause the video if you haven't yet chosen a scene to focus on and then resume when you're ready.

So we've chosen a scene that we're going to focus on and now we need to plot out what will happen in that scene.

I've done an example for you using my narrative that I've been building up over the last few lessons just to show you what this might look like and the kind of information you might need.

So in my narrative, this is about Chris, a 14-year-old boy who was walking home from school and through the woods, which were inspired by the picture, the image of the first lesson.

He finds a girl called Jess.

I want this scene to take place midway through the story.

Chris and Jess are in the woods and they're having a conversation.

So in this scene, here's what I want to happen.

Chris is asking why she's there, first of all.

Then Jess is going to be defensive and cagey and she's not really going to tell him the truth, first of all.

But then after all that, I want her to open up and explain why she is living in the woods and what problems that she's encountered.

I want him to find out that Jess stole some money and that that's why she's currently in this situation.

And at the end of the scene I want to say that she's scared to go back and she feels like she can't go back home.

And then that scene will lead on to the next scene where Chris will then say he wants to help her and then he'll volunteer to take her to his parents' house so that she can get some help and support.

So with that plot line that just helps me understand and summarise what I want to achieve from this scene, which is midway through my narrative.

So by plotting it out, I've now got a really good understanding of all the things I would need to say as my character and it will help me understand what I want to improvise as well.

So now what I'd like you to do is plot out the structure of your scene in a similar way to as I did.

You can make it like a bullet point list or a flow chart of what happens in your scene.

Just remember that from this you are going to write a monologue for your character.

So this has got to be a plot line that's going to enable you to speak as that character to cover some of that scene.

So plus that everything that they need to say in the scene and then resume when you are finished.

So we're going to improvise now based on what we've planned, but we haven't scripted it.

I've got nothing in my hands.

I'm just going to give the dialogue a go, but based on what I want to achieve from this scene.

And I'm going to try this in my character as Jess, which is the narrative I've been developing as my example to you in these lessons.

Before we improvise then we should warm up again, especially because we might have been sat down so far today.

We're going to stretch out to this a bit.

Then we're going to warm up our voices for a few minutes.

So let's start again with this next stretch.

Arms out in front of you, Up to the ceiling.

Float your arms down by your sides.

Just do that again with arms straight out in front of you, float up to the ceiling.

Nice big stretch.

Go into your tip toes if you want to.

Float around this down by your sides.

Roll your shoulders up.

Roll your shoulders forward.

Like we said in the last lesson, the reason we do this is so that our body is nice and loose, comfortable when performing, and so that we don't injure ourselves because drama should be nice and physical.

We need to be in good physical conditions do that.

Let's just put our right arm out in the air.

We're going to shake that out.

So you're shaking it as if you try to get your hand off your arm.

Shake your left arm in the air.

Nice and big as if you're trying to shake your hands right off your arm.

Right leg, gives that a good shake.

If you're wearing any slip on shoes they might have just flowed across the room, hopefully not.

And left leg give that a big shake.

Try and keep your balance.

Nice big shake.

Making our bodies nice and loose.

All right, then we could do some back rolls now.

So with your legs just shoulder width apart you're going to roll down so that your back is bent.

Bend your knees slightly.

And you're aiming for your hand to touch your toes or the floor.

So just roll you back down.

I'm going to disappear out of the shots, obviously.

Hang in there for a second so that your knees are bent, your arms are just nice and loose.

Your head is down.

No tension in your neck.

And just roll up your body very gently, very slowly.

Back up to the standing position.

Hair out of your face.

Love that, we would do that maybe a few more times, but we'll just do a little bit of a vocal warm up now as well.

So let's just practise a few tongue twisters.

So let's say unique New York.

So unique New York, but let's try and say that together.

Unique New York, unique New York.

Try and do that with me.

Let's do that five times.

Unique New York, unique New York, unique New York unique New York, unique New York.

So what we're trying to do with tongue twisters is warm up what we call organs of articulation, which are the things inside our mouth that help us speak more clearly.

So our teeth touch on our lips and our palettes.

So we're trying to warm those up and get those moving.

Let's try Peter Piper.

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.

Let's try and say that together all in one go.

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.

Let us try and say that three times with me.

Are you ready? Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.

Good.

Red lorry, yellow lorry.

Easy one, quite hard to say though.

So let's try and say that a few times together.

Red lorry, yellow lorry, red lorry, yellow lorry, red lorry, yellow lorry.

So you're working the mouth and you're working your origins articulation.

Hopefully that's getting a bit more warmed up.

Let's try and say that one fast five times, okay? Red lorry, yellow lorry, red lorry, yellow lorry, red lorry, yellow lorry, red lorry, yellow lorry, red lorry, yellow lorry, Easier than it seems, okay? So we've done some tongue twisters.

We've done some body warming up.

So we're going to have to go improvising now.

So we're not scripted this but we have thoughts about what we're doing in our scene, because we've structured it.

And we've done all the work preparation wise last week in terms of our character journey, emotion graph, role on the wall.

So we've got quite a good sense of our character and what they're experiencing.

I have decided that my character Jess is sat.

She's sat on a tree stump in the woods.

I'm going to sit down for this.

You need to think when you're improvising where the person is that you're speaking to, especially if this is a monologue, which is what we're doing at the moment.

So I'm imagining that Chris, the person I'm speaking to, is just there, just slightly off camera so that I'm not staring down the camera, for their speech.

I'm going to improvise the section where Jess is being defensive and she's being quite cagey.

I'm just going to spend a second getting into that character, thinking about how she's thinking or feeling.

I've adjusted my body language to show that.

So I'm now a bit more hunched.

I'm fiddling with my hands a bit chill, a bit nervous and this looks a bit defensive.

My facial expression is now quite serious, but I've not planned what I'm going to say.

I'm just going to try to improvise that.

What I wanted to achieve is for Chris to know that I'm defensive, I'm being cagey.

He's asking me why I'm here in the woods so I don't want to answer that question.

So now I'm just going to try and improvise those words.

Well, I just live here.

Well, I just do.

Food.

Yeah, I'll manage, okay? It's quite warm actually.

It's not even that cold than my sleeping bag.

So I think that was okay.

I might try that again.

I might see if there's anything else I want to add to that.

But with improvising it's important not to overthink and don't feel like your friends that are going to do it differently.

Try and remember what you said, even though it might come out slightly differently the next time.

But thinking where do I go from there? Is there anything else I want to build and add to what I've done so far? So I'm going to try that again.

I live here.

I just do.

Food.

Yeah, I'll manage, it's fine.

It's not even that cold actually.

I've got a sleeping bag Yeah, maybe in winter, obviously it's freezing, but normally, I'm absolutely fine.

And I just like my own space.

I like being on my own.

So I think I've developed a bit more that she's trying to convince Chris that she's happy and that everything's fine.

And she's trying to get across to him that this is all fine.

Whereas actually, if we read between the, I think we can tell that she's not happy and that she would like to go home.

So through improvising that I've then built on it.

I've added a bit more.

I will then keep going back over that.

Try and remembering what I've done.

Don't have to change it every time, but it's okay if it does come out slightly differently.

And then eventually when I'm happy with what I've done I would keep going over it until that becomes cemented, it becomes solidified and then later on I might write it down.

But for now it's just improvised.

The words have just come out of my mouth and I'm starting to get a sense of this character Here I've summarised some top tips for improvising based on the demonstration I just showed you.

So as we did first, we warmed up, didn't we? So it's important just to stand up, shake out your body, practise if you tongue twisters.

So you might want to do a bit of a warm up if you didn't follow the warmup with me in the video just so that you are ready to feel a bit more free to do your improvising today.

It's important before you start to think about who are you talking to and where they are.

So plan who you are talking to, decide where they are on the stage.

Remember that if it's direct audience address you're talking to the camera, but if it's a character you might want to put them slightly off centre.

And so you're not staring directly at the audience.

Then when you improvise, just go for it.

Just start talking, try not to overthink it.

It's not a performance yet.

Try not to self-correct all the time and stop and start again.

Allow that to be a bit of a flow in what you're saying.

And then these two tips of accept and build are important as well.

So just try to keep going.

Accept what you've said so far, try to build on that the next time and soon you'll have a really good improvised monologue.

So it's time to have a go then.

We've done a demonstration.

We've looked at some top tips.

I'd like to spend 10 minutes now improvising your own monologue for this scene.

It only has to be for example, two or three minutes long, but you may want to keep going back over it.

Repeat some sections that you've done to really cement it in your mind, extend it, accept and build and what you've done.

So that might take you up to 10 minutes.

Take your time with this task.

Be creative, make sure you did a bit of warming up first and then we will resume when you're ready.

Great, well done, you've got a scene now.

So we've improvised it and now we will build and develop it a little bit more.

We're going to add in a new technique to this improvised scene and that's called thought tracking.

So thought tracking is when we step out of the scene and we speak directly to the audience.

We stay in character, but we speak to the audience instead of the other characters in the scene.

To do this we need to do something called breaking the fourth wall.

So we break the fourth wall by breaking through an invisible barrier on the stage.

So if you've been thinking about it, a traditional stage has three walls, a back and two side walls.

There is then an imaginary fourth wall, which is in front of the actors separating the performers on stage and the audience.

And we call that the fourth wall.

It creates a barrier so that there isn't any interaction between the performers on stage and the audience.

But we can actually break that barrier by looking or speaking directly to the audience and that's called breaking the fourth wall.

It can be a really engaging and successful technique.

It can give the audience direct information about our characters.

It can help communicate a message directly to the audience.

So it's a technique that's really commonly used and something that we can use to our advantage in this devising process.

So let's just summarise what we understand about this.

To break the fourth wall we need to come out of character.

Is that true, or is that false? It is false because we can stay in character.

It's your character who is speaking to the audience to tell the audience their thoughts directly.

We've stepped out of the scene, but we don't have to step out of our character.

So now let's have a look at thought tracking in a bit more detail.

So thought tracking is where we can step out of our scene, but stay in character and speak directly to the audience.

So what we then say to the audience is not heard by the characters in the scene and it might be something different.

It might be a secret, it might be a contradiction.

It might be the truth whereas in the scene we've told a lie.

And it might offer more information about what our character is experiencing.

So just to show you what that might look like.

If I go back into magazine as Jess, the scene that I improvised earlier, towards the end of that section I spoke about how I manage, I get food.

It's quite comfy actually like my own space.

But then I want to thought track.

I want to come out of that and actually tell the audience how I really feel.

You don't have to, but I'm going to sit down as Jess.

And I'm going to stand up to speak to the audience.

So it's clear, I've come out of the scene.

In scene I'm talking to Chris and I've placed him just over here.

But then when I thought track, I'm going to speak to the audience and I'm imagining the audience is the camera.

Okay, so it might look or sound a little bit like this.

Again, this is improvised.

So if I get it wrong, I'll start again and I'll try it a couple of times.

And I've not crammed what I'm going to say in advance.

I live here.

I just do.

Food.

Yeah, I eat, I have food, I manage fine.

It's not even that cold actually.

In my sleeping bag it's quite warm.

Yeah, obviously in the winter it's freezing, but it's fine.

Anyway, I like it.

I like my own space.

I hate it.

I'm lonely.

I really miss my mom and dad.

I want to go home, but I just feel so embarrassed.

So ashamed.

I know they miss me.

I will go back.

I really want to see them.

Although I feel terrible for what I know I've put them through.

It's non of your business anyway.

Okay, so what we had there was clearly dialogue that was within the scene, but then I thought tracked and came out and I said something completely different.

So, whereas in the scene, I was trying to convince Chris, my other character, that living in the woods was fine and that I was perfectly happy, I then came out in my thought tracking told the audience that I was lonely and that I was sad and that I wanted to go home.

And that I love my mom and dad.

And the miss them and I know they miss me.

So that adds an extra dimension to the scene then, doesn't it? And it creates what we call dramatic irony because dramatic irony is when the audience know more than the characters themselves.

So the audience have more of an insight into Jess's character than Chris does.

And so that adds an extra dimension as we said to your character and to your scene and it makes it more interesting.

So that's how we thought track.

That's what it might look like.

You could do that a few times within your scene.

You could do it at the start and end.

You could do it midway through.

Any point where you feel like you want to share more information or say something a bit different.

It's a really good technique to use and helps us build even more depth into our characters.

What we looked at in that demonstration then were the different ways that you might want to do some thought tracking and how it can benefit your performance.

I've just summarised some of the different ways that you might decide to thought track as your character.

For example, you could tell the audience a secret that the other characters on stage don't know.

You might want to share information with them that hasn't been shared with the other characters when you break the fourth wall.

You might want to contradict a lie.

So you might tell a lie in your speech, in your monologue, and then use thought tracking to break out of that and tell the audience the truth.

That would create this idea of dramatic irony as I just said in the demonstration, because what we're doing there is we're giving the audience more information than the characters on stage know.

And that creates this effect called dramatic irony.

You might want to tell the audience how you feel about the situation which is currently going on on stage.

Or how you feel about another character who you are talking to.

And again, that would create dramatic irony because it would add more information that you're not sharing with the characters.

So use these three ideas if it helps you to do your own thought tracking in your monologue.

And now it's time to create your thought tracking for yourself.

So you've got your monologue from earlier in the lesson, we improvised that.

If you can now try to add thought tracking to have perhaps about three different moments in the monologue.

Then add in what you would say to the audience in these direct audience address moments.

As we've done before, we just need to improvise it.

So give it a go, accept, build, see what works.

There's no pressure at all.

And then let's resume when you've finished with the thought tracking task.

Tremendous lesson.

What I think we should do is write down our monologues.

We've improvised them and we've developed them.

We've refined them by adding in some more dramatic techniques.

I think we should now write them down so that we remember them for the next lesson.

So what you're going to do now is effectively write a script for your devised performance.

Just pause the video while you write out your monologue and then resume just when you're done.

It's always a good idea to check our progress and review.

So before we end this lesson, what we'll do is look at our monologue, read this now out loud and answer a few questions just to check our progress and review it.

When you read your monologue out loud I'd like you to select some of the questions you can see here on the slide, just to self-assess your work so far.

So, for example, if you're looking at the first column you might want to check if your monologue makes sense.

Does it flow? Is the story clear? Have you written it in first person? And now you speaking in first person.

Is it well-structured? Is the thought tracking at the right point? Does it add to the story? Is the story that you're telling structured well? How long does your monologue? Now you've had the chance to read it out, have you maybe timed it and are you aware that it's perhaps a bit too short? Is it very long or is it just right? By just asking ourselves some of these questions it helps us to always improve our work and always refine it further.

So spend some time here on this self assessment review and then when we're ready, we'll progress to the next slide and that's the end of our lesson for today.

Well done everybody.

You've done some really good work today in developing your scene, your character, you've improvised.

You've added a new technique called thought tracking.

And then finally we've written that monologue down.

So we've done some great work today.

If you want to share your work, again you can ask the parents or carer to do that.

They can do that on Twitter.

They can tag @OakNational and they can put #LearnwithOak.

But really well done for today.

And I'll see you next time.

Bye.