by Gregory Schmidt
"The Skit is the Thing"
Maybe you've heard the quote from Shakespeare 'the play is the thing' but couldn't imagine your children or yourself delving any further into theater to learn more about that specific play.
Yet, imagination is the one intellectual resource your students may have more than any other. They not only absorb various emotions and memories, they also visual how they might fit into those mental worlds. They even see themselves playing out how those experiences affected them.
So, we begin with the simple skit. This is a brief comedic or dramatic telling of a basic activity or experience, but often with a meaningful punchline.
I recently attended a Cub Scout awards night, and what do you think was on the agenda right after the Pledge of Allegiance and the Scout Oath. It was several fun skits to get the boys up in front of the parents and get the room in the mood for an engaging evening.
Some skits are patriotic and some are silly. Your student has all the freedom of their mind and memory to engage you and to expand their social skills, when asked to compose a simple four or five line skit.
Use the time for this "play making" to coincide with your English or Composition lessons. It will help them to realize that not only is the play the thing, but that acting and dramatization helps them better understand language.
Suggest that they utilize one costume and only one or two props to tell you (and the rest of the family audience) what it was like the first time they went, for example, fishing or to the dentist or went to the store by themselves. Now, you have a premise and can lay out a scene (setting). Encourage them to speak out on how they really feel about some one or some one experience. Show them how to script out on paper very basic stage directions and then subsequent lines of dialogue.
Just like story hour at elementary school, your in-house student(s) could have a weekly skit session to relive or reflect or poke fun at something they remember from the passing week.
This is all a very loosely suggested structure to encourage your student(s) and you to move to the next step: play-making. Some of the most meaningful sessions I have ever had with young theater students is to allow them to write their own one-act play. And usually that play is about something in their own life that just has to be told.
Then when you take that to the next academic level of "producing" the play you have begun to turn your shy inexperienced youngster into an explorer: a citizen who wants to venture out to learn new things and how that interacts with the human in us. Don't be timid about the world of Theater. It was the original mystery plays and church dramas that brought to light the lessons of the Bible for an illiterate public.
When your child/student can put into words and actions their fears and hopes within a short stage play, all other academic course study will be at their command.
Gregory Schmidt is heading up the national movement called Plant Your Parking, encouraging people to do "front lawn gardening" and provide more produce for themselves, neighbors and food banks. He is also the writer-producer of the Christian children's movie series with the Bueno Gang kids. www.buenogang.com. Ordering copies of these DVDs is easy by contacting info@buenogang.com.
"The Skit is the Thing"
Maybe you've heard the quote from Shakespeare 'the play is the thing' but couldn't imagine your children or yourself delving any further into theater to learn more about that specific play.
Yet, imagination is the one intellectual resource your students may have more than any other. They not only absorb various emotions and memories, they also visual how they might fit into those mental worlds. They even see themselves playing out how those experiences affected them.
So, we begin with the simple skit. This is a brief comedic or dramatic telling of a basic activity or experience, but often with a meaningful punchline.
I recently attended a Cub Scout awards night, and what do you think was on the agenda right after the Pledge of Allegiance and the Scout Oath. It was several fun skits to get the boys up in front of the parents and get the room in the mood for an engaging evening.
Some skits are patriotic and some are silly. Your student has all the freedom of their mind and memory to engage you and to expand their social skills, when asked to compose a simple four or five line skit.
Use the time for this "play making" to coincide with your English or Composition lessons. It will help them to realize that not only is the play the thing, but that acting and dramatization helps them better understand language.
Suggest that they utilize one costume and only one or two props to tell you (and the rest of the family audience) what it was like the first time they went, for example, fishing or to the dentist or went to the store by themselves. Now, you have a premise and can lay out a scene (setting). Encourage them to speak out on how they really feel about some one or some one experience. Show them how to script out on paper very basic stage directions and then subsequent lines of dialogue.
Just like story hour at elementary school, your in-house student(s) could have a weekly skit session to relive or reflect or poke fun at something they remember from the passing week.
This is all a very loosely suggested structure to encourage your student(s) and you to move to the next step: play-making. Some of the most meaningful sessions I have ever had with young theater students is to allow them to write their own one-act play. And usually that play is about something in their own life that just has to be told.
Then when you take that to the next academic level of "producing" the play you have begun to turn your shy inexperienced youngster into an explorer: a citizen who wants to venture out to learn new things and how that interacts with the human in us. Don't be timid about the world of Theater. It was the original mystery plays and church dramas that brought to light the lessons of the Bible for an illiterate public.
When your child/student can put into words and actions their fears and hopes within a short stage play, all other academic course study will be at their command.
Gregory Schmidt is heading up the national movement called Plant Your Parking, encouraging people to do "front lawn gardening" and provide more produce for themselves, neighbors and food banks. He is also the writer-producer of the Christian children's movie series with the Bueno Gang kids. www.buenogang.com. Ordering copies of these DVDs is easy by contacting info@buenogang.com.
