"Teaching Shakespeare Through Exercises on Acting and on the Basic Emotions"
Later in the semester, we paused in our "regular" classwork to
do the following sequence of exercises. After we discussed a few examples
of how one emotion can cover up another (the way laughter can cover up fear),
I asked each student to make a list, under two headings:
Students shared these in small groups, and combined their lists.
Using materials I had brought to class, each student made two (or more)
masks: one to represent the surface emotion, and one to represent
the hidden emotion(s). They made the masks with paper plates and colored
markers, with scissor-cut eye holes.
Wearing the masks in succession, each student then acted out (first to the
group, then to the class at large) a short representation of the surface
and hidden emotion he or she had chosen.
After discussing this exercise, we turned to the text (by this time, we
were reading King Lear) and pointed out examples of surface and hidden
emotions, indicating how these are expressed in language and stage action.
Students were assigned two followups: (1) Further illustrations from the
text, and (2) illustrations from life.
In carrying out this exercise, I not only tried to sensitize students to
other levels of perception, but I tried to suggest that there are patterns
in the seeming welter of emotions, definite relationships and transformations--out
of which literature is born.
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