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Act 1, Scene 1:
Getting Started

Guide to Educator
resources

For the K-3 teacher
For the 4-8 teacher
Shakespeare and
the TEKS

Texts for
classroom use

A Guide To The Plays
"A Most Rare Vision"–
Student and educator
voices

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  1. O, for a Muse of fire!
  2. Suggested activities:
    A quick overview
  3. Activities for ensemble play
  1. Yes!
  2. Group Sculptures
  3. Mirrors
  4. Sculpture Gallery
  5. Presents
  6. Have You Seen My Kitty?
  7. Magic Hat
  8. Hotseat, or, The Press Conference
  1. “I’ll follow you!”: A choral speech
  2. Three Worlds
  3. Two-character exchanges
  4. “Now I am alone”: The soliloquy
  5. Group voice: Sharing a character
  6. Showdown: Oberon vs. Titania
  1. Planning the Project: What do you want your students to achieve?
  2. Planning the Project: Making room for Shakespeare
  3. Planning the Project: The Final Performance
  4. A sample sequence
  5. Laying the foundation, establishing some rituals
  6. Preparing for the journey: A checklist
  7. We shall not cease from exploration

Materials needed:
Open space, room enough for everyone to have some elbow room (move desks aside if necessary, or go outside)

Time needed:
10-20 minutes, depending on how much time you want to spend on it

Students participating:
everyone at once

This is a somewhat standard theater warm-up game, and many of the students may have done it before. But it is still a good one to do for 5-10 minutes, because doing it well is always a challenge. The idea is to train students to be responsive to others, and to sustain a level of focused concentration. The room should be completely silent while this game is played!

This is one you can return to later, to sharpen focus and to show the kids how far they’ve come since the first time they played it.

It is also a good lead-in to the next activity on this list, Sculpture Gallery.
  1. Everyone picks a partner, or is assigned a partner quickly by you. If you have an odd number, you’ll have to partner with someone, while breaking on occasion to look around the room.
  2. Everyone stands facing their partner, without talking, arms at sides, looking into eyes of partner. The “no talking” rule begins now – no one talks until you decide to have a brief discussion about how the activity went.
  3. Person A in the team is the mirror first, Person B is the “person in front of the mirror.” When you give the signal, B begins to slowly, slowly, gradually move his or her body. A “mirrors” B’s movements, increment by increment.
  4. Tell the students to start small, with just slow hand and arm movements. Then gradually move both arms; then twist the body slowly; then change the facial expression slowly.
  5. After 5 minutes, have A and B switch roles and do it the other way for 5 minutes.
  6. At a certain point, instruct students to begin miming, in slow slow motion, certain things you might do in front of a real mirror: brushing teeth, trying on clothes, combing hair, etc.
  7. Watch out for students trying to catch their partner off guard by moving quickly; this is a team exercise. Ideally, we should get the feeling that when A moves, B is right there, as if B knew already what A was going to do.
  8. The next level is this: Ask the teams to choose who will lead, who will mirror, and then let each team have 60 seconds in front of the class to do their mirroring. The class has to guess who is the leader. To make it harder, ask the class to close their eyes for 5 seconds, so the team can begin its movements without being seen (the one who moves first would clearly be the leader, so that’s a giveaway).
  9. Ask students to write down their guess, rather than shout it out. Keep a tally of how many chose the correct leader for each team.
  10. Once all the teams’ scores have been tallied, see who managed to fool the most people. That team is the “winner.” It’s best not to over-emphasize the competitive nature – find praise for each group, commenting on their particular skill or a certain move that worked well.
  11. Watch out for one thing that sometimes happens in this game: Teams will, consciously or accidentally, begin to switch leaders. This is interesting to watch, but it makes it impossible to decide who is truly leading.
  12. End with a brief discussion about the activity – ask the students what it was like, if they could feel themselves getting better at it, etc.