Unit 1 — Characters- Dramatic Essentials
Description
This opening unit focuses on the fundamental roles of the theatrical process as students gain experience as actors, writers, designers, and directors in developing a short theatrical production. Students begin by embodying characters through circumstances and wants, making vocal and physical choices to create truthful performances. As the unit progresses, students move into the writing process, imagining how character circumstances and wants generate conflict in storytelling. Collaborative playmaking includes time devoted to theatrical design, where students make choices about costumes, props, and sets. The unit culminates with a play festival in which students celebrate the class's work and reflect on the dramatic development process.
Essential Questions
- How does a play become a play? What are the steps to making a play happen? Who contributes to that process?
- What are the fundamental tools that actors and writers have to create characters?
- Why do performers rehearse? What is the value of reflection in the rehearsal process?
Learning Objectives
- Build trust and establish group norms.
- Make choices to embody truthful choices in performance.
- Analyze the fundamental elements of story structure.
- Use empathy to understand characters' emotional circumstances.
- Develop and resolve conflicts in storytelling.
- Reflect on the individual's role in the process of developing a play.
- Analyze how design elements enhance truth in performance.
Supplemental Resources
- Index cards for character profile notes
- Chart paper for blocking diagrams and staging notes
- Markers and colored pencils for set design sketches
- Clipboards for peer observation and feedback
- Printed word lists of emotion vocabulary for character development
Visual Arts - Creating
Visual Arts - Presenting
Students examine theatrical spaces and traditions across different cultures and time periods, analyzing how theatre reflects and reveals the values, beliefs, and perspectives of different societies throughout history.
Students write original scenes and monologues, developing narrative and descriptive writing skills while reading scripts and analyzing character dialogue and stage directions.
Students use technology tools to record and analyze performances, evaluate design choices in theatrical productions, and understand how technology influences performance spaces and set design.
Formative Assessments
- Improvisation: participate in group games and individual improvisation scenario practice in preparation for performance.
- Scene writing: write and perform original scenes created collaboratively in small groups.
- Monologues: read aloud informal monologues and other public speaking in response to an informal topic in preparation for writing.
- Peer review and informal observations during rehearsal process.
- Quick writes and self-assessment reflections on group work and individual progress.
Summative Assessment
Students perform monologues following specific elements outlined in an established rubric and participate in a play festival where the class celebrates its work and reflects on the process of dramatic development.
Benchmark Assessment
A short-form scene performance or recorded monologue assessing students' ability to make vocal and physical choices that show character wants and circumstances, aligned with standards in character development and performance technique.
Alternative Assessment
Students may demonstrate character embodiment through physical movement and gesture with teacher prompts or visual character cards instead of verbal improvisation. Students may dictate scene ideas to a scribe or use a graphic organizer to plan character circumstances and wants before collaborative writing.
IEP (Individualized Education Program)
Because this unit centers on embodying characters through vocal and physical choices, students may benefit from additional processing time before improvisation or performance tasks, along with visual supports such as graphic organizers that break down character circumstances and wants. Offering alternative output modes — such as dictating written reflections, using sentence frames for quick writes, or rehearsing with a partner before performing for the group — can reduce barriers while keeping students engaged with the same core dramatic concepts. For the summative monologue, scaffolded rehearsal check-ins and a simplified rubric preview can help students understand expectations and monitor their own progress.
Section 504
Students in this unit may benefit from preferential seating during group discussions and design activities, as well as extended time during the writing phases of scene development and self-assessment reflections. Minimizing auditory or visual distractions during rehearsal and performance preparation supports focus during activities that require sustained attention to character work.
ELL / MLL
This unit's emphasis on character emotion and storytelling offers natural entry points through visual and physical expression, which can support students still developing English proficiency. Providing visual vocabulary supports — such as illustrated word banks for emotional states, conflict types, and design elements — helps students access the unit's core concepts. Teachers can offer simplified or bilingual prompts for quick writes and self-reflections, and pairing MLL students with bilingual peers during collaborative playmaking can ease participation in the scene-writing and rehearsal process.
At Risk (RTI)
Connecting character work to students' own lived experiences and familiar stories can build confidence and lower the stakes of early performance tasks like improvisation and peer review. Offering structured entry points — such as partially developed character profiles or conflict scenario prompts — gives students a clear starting place without oversimplifying the creative challenge. Breaking the scene-writing and rehearsal process into smaller, clearly sequenced steps with frequent check-ins helps students sustain engagement and experience success across the full arc of the unit.
Gifted & Talented
Students who demonstrate early mastery of foundational character and story concepts can be invited to deepen their engagement by exploring the intersection of theatrical design choices and character psychology, considering how visual and spatial decisions communicate subtext. In the scene-writing phase, these students may pursue more complex narrative structures — such as non-linear storytelling or multiple-protagonist conflicts — and take on dramaturgical or directing roles during the collaborative playmaking process. Encouraging independent analysis of professional productions or published playscripts can further extend thinking about how skilled writers and performers construct truthful, layered characters.