DRA 132 Stage Movement

Lecture: 2 Lab: 2 Clinic: 0 Credits: 3

This course provides an applied study of selected principles of stage movement for actors. Topics include improvisation, mime, stage combat, clowning, choreography, and masks. Upon completion, students should be able to focus properly on stage, to create characters, and to improvise scenes, perform mimes, fight, clown, juggle, and waltz.

This course has been approved for transfer under the CAA as a premajor and/or elective course requirement.

Co-requisite(s): DRA 111.
Course is typically offered in Spring (when offered).
Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs)
At the completion of the course, the students should be able to do the following:

Demonstrate the basic principles of mime by applying them, after classroom practice, in a 2-3 minute self-generated solo performance piece with specific storytelling guidelines, accompanied by a written scenario of all actions.
Identify improvement in hand-eye coordination and concentration by juggling three balls for at least 10 seconds in front of an audience of peers.
Safely and accurately illustrate, with a partner, at least 5 specified acts of hand-to-hand stage violence in the context of a piece of choreography created by the instructor and performed for an audience of peers.
Discover the necessity for economy and control of physical gesture through the strict and specific limitation of movements in the performance of a memorized Shakespeare sonnet before an audience of peers.
Explore an expanded range of specific movement possibilities through instructor- guided specific improvisations using masks and improvisation exercises created by Viola Spolin.
Determine the extent of enhanced flexibility and physical control through regularly practiced, in-class goal-oriented stretch and flexibility exercises (such as placing the palms on the floor without bending the knees).
Apply specific relaxation and tension-release techniques to every in class performance project and exercise, such as rehearsing all stage combat scenes in slow motion.
Create a non-speaking, 3-4 minute physically focused storytelling performance piece incorporating any combination of mime, juggling, mask work, stage combat, and physical improvisation, to be performed for an audience.