.

THE BOB WILSON HOLISTIC METHOD

Characterization & Devising Projects

for Language Learning

by Bob Wilson at autoenglish.org

Connect Energize voice and body Focus Calm

Drama as a subject is often divided into process drama and product drama. Process is about working on technique and typically includes lots of improvisation. Product drama is focussed on a final product or play. This play can be a pre-written text or it can be a devised text. Devised texts are the product of doing characterization exercises and by letting students put together their own play. This is particulary interesting for language learning as students get to write their own text and then interpret it. The projects on this page are for devising plays.

CHARACTERIZATION and DEVISING PROJECTS

1. SOUNDSCAPES - creating characters from scratch  
Materials: Youtube, sound and pencil and paper  
 
1 Everyone needs a pencil and notebook to write down their ideas.
2 Play some atmospheric sounds from Youtube eg Gregorian chants or city sounds etc.
3 The players imagine they are characters in this soundscape.
4 The players note down their best ideas about WHERE and WHO they are.
5 After 5 mins or so, everyone sits in a circle and shares their ideas.
6 In teams, students think of an adventure using their combination of characters.
7 Students write a script with their characters and prepare a play.
 
2. AVATAR SNOWBALLING - creating characters from scratch  
Paper and pens or pencils.  
 
1 Students lie on the floor in a circle facing inwards.
2 Teacher places a piece of paper in front of each
3 Teacher tells the students to describe the physical appearance of a character.
4 Then tell the students to pass their piece of paper to the right. Each student now has a different piece of paper in front of them.
5 The students now read the physical description and then add a description of the character's personality.
6 The pieces of paper keep moving one place to the right, each time describing the following things:
  what they like wearing
  likes and dislikes
  their occupation
  a special skill
7 Now everyone scrunches up the piece of paper in front of them into a ball.
8 The students now have a paper ball fight for 2 minutes.
9 Now tell the students to pick up the paper ball nearest them. This ball with be their character.
10 Students now describe their character to the class.
11 Students must now think of a name for their character.
12 Students form teams and then use their characters to write and perform a play.
 
3. THE MERRY-GO-ROUND - GETTING TO KNOW THE CHARACTERS  
1 Divide the class into As and Bs
2 The As make an outer circle and the Bs make an inner circle.
3 As and Bs have 3 minutes to tell each other about their characters and their adventures.
4 Now all the As more one person to the right. The students have another three minutes to talk about their characters to a different person.
5 The As keep moving one place to the right every three minutes so that lots of different people get to talk together.
 
   
   
 

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