Devising from an image: Narrative approaches

Waiting: an introduction to drama conventions

Acting Shakespeare: Monologues from A Midsummer Night's Dream

Practising physical and vocal skills

Live theatre responses: Becoming a critic

Narrative structures using poetry: Developing monologues

Who Cares?: A devising unit

Acting Shakespeare: Twelfth Night

Posture, gesture and voice in performance

Live theatre responses: Using social media

Approaching text: Bringing it to life

One text, different approaches

The journey: a verbatim project

Study of text in contemporary, cultural contexts

Live performance responses: Evaluating stagecraft

Understanding roles and responsibilities of the creative team

Commedia dell'arte: an introduction

Using Drama conventions to explore contemporary issues

Drama

Y8 Drama

Key Stage 3

Year 8

UNIT

In this lesson, we will respond imaginatively to stimulus, and consider some basic set design, before learning the key features of narration, in the context of a new story.

What has happened? Using Narration to make a story

In this lesson, we will use Hot Seating and Forum Theatre to explore potential plot lines and characters when devising.

Finding out more - Using Hot-Seating and Forum Theatre

The objective of this lesson is to recall key facts from the text.
We will explore the main characters of the play and experiment with blocking and staging.


Who Cares? by Matt Woodhead (part 1)

In this lesson, we will use Vocal Expression and Choral Speaking to explore the artistic intention in the last scene of 'Who Cares?'

Who Cares? by Matt Woodhead (part 2)

﻿Hello and welcome to drama. And this is lesson four in a unit called "Who Cares." The first couple of lessons we were devising and we were making our own drama, and last lesson and this lesson, we're looking at a play called, "Who Cares" by Matt Woodhead. We're going to continue to explore that text today, and we're going to be discussing the artistic intentions of the play. So the message that it promotes. We're going to look at key lines from the last scene, and we're going to use vocal expression and choral speaking to try and communicate some of the meaning of the play. I think you're going to really enjoy it. Let's see what you'll need to take part. You guys need something to write with, so a pen or pencil, and you'll need something to write on. So that's some paper or a notebook. You guys need a little bit of space to do some acting too. Because this is a practical lesson and you'll be moving around, we need to keep safe. So this lesson should take place inside. Make sure there is enough space for you to work, including a booth. So look out for if light fits in it. You might want to take your shoes and socks off and act in bare feet, either way, make sure the floor is not slipping, wear some comfortable clothing so you can move around. You can pause the video now, if you need to get anything for this lesson. First, we'll go over some things that we've learned in some previous lessons and I'll give you a little overview of the play too if you've never come across it before. Next, I'll introduce the key terminology today, vocal expression, choral speaking and artistic intention. After that, we will discuss the artistic intention of the play and we'll think about why did somebody write this brilliant play, after that we'll explore vocal expression and choral speaking. Well, you'd be doing some acting using your voice yourselves. Finally, we'll put it all together into a mini performance, and then after the lesson, there's also an exit quiz where you can go and check all the things that you've learned too. Let's recap, last lesson, we started looking at this play "Who Cares" by Matt Woodhead. Now, if you were in that lesson, what I'd like you to do is try and remember as many things about the play as you can. And don't worry if you've never seen this play before, because what I'd like you to do is just from looking at the title "Who Cares" and the picture here, I'd like you to guess and suppose some things that you think the play might be about. So you can pause the video now, and I'd like you to jot down as many things as you can remember from the play or as many things as you can gather from looking at this image or even the title itself. When you've written down 10 things, click Resume and we'll move on to next part of the lesson. Okay, welcome back. So what kind of things were you writing down? I'm particularly interested in those people who have never seen this play or never heard of this play before. I wonder what you made of the front cover to the play. Hopefully you will have identified that this is a play about young people. We can see a young person there, we can tell because she's wearing school uniform, you might have picked up on the fact that, she's on the bus there, so that could have made you think what this person's life is like, you know where do they have to go and they have to get the bus there. Maybe you look to that title "Who cares?" And I wonder what that made you think, is that what the character's thinking, are they thinking well, who cares about me or is that maybe what some other people are thinking about this character, maybe their teacher or one of their family members. If you were in our last lesson then hopefully you'll have remembered a few more facts than that. Now the play is called "Who Cares?" Because the play is in fact about young carers and the main characters in the play are all looking after a relative at home, whilst they're also going to school and doing, trying to do all the normal things that teenagers do too. And hopefully you remembered some of the other things that we learned from the first scene. We looked at the morning routine of the characters, didn't we? And we saw that they did kind of normal things like most teenagers do like get on the bus to school here, getting their coursework together, you can see the girl got her coursework in her hand there, I think, or a bag but then we also saw them do some not usual things. So one of the characters had to make some appointments and sought out prescriptions for their family member. Another person had to do the washing and the cooking and everything before they went to school. If you're not sure what we mean by young carer, I think it's worth just going over this information. It really help us in today's lesson actually, when we start thinking about artistic intention, I'll explain that in a minute. So it's estimated there are more than 700,000 young carers in the UK, and these are children and young people age 17 and under who provide unpaid care to a family member because of the disability or illness, mental health condition, or even an addiction. So as I kind of explained before, these young people are from managing lots of responsibilities from tasks like cooking and washing and looking after budgets and money, picking up prescriptions to providing you know, real personal and emotional support for families too. Often, these young people are managing all these responsibilities without professionals or school teachers or friends, even knowing about it. And they're trying to balance their school life and their social life and being a young carer without anybody really knowing about it. Sometimes even carers don't even know that they're young carers themselves, and this information will be really important as we start to think about why somebody decided to write a play about this. And maybe you could start thinking about that right now. Why would somebody write a play about young carers? There's key words, vocal expression. That's how we say our words in drama. You're going to be experimenting with same words in lots of different ways in this lesson. Choral speaking is when a group of actors speak together and share words, you're going to be doing that with me today. Artistic intention is the meaning or message or purpose of a piece of drama, and that's the first thing that we're going to think about now. Quick test then, artistic intention is making the drama as arty as possible, is that true or false? Point to the answer that you think is correct now? It's false, okay? So just because we've got the word artistic in there doesn't mean it has to be really complicated. The artistic intention is just a message or meaning or purpose of a piece of drama. And that could be something as simple as a comedy that is designed to make someone laugh. It could be a Shakespeare play like Mark Bridge, which is meant to make us think about power and how we use it or misuse it. Maybe in naturalistic play is designed to make us really think about human emotions, how we deal with them. Maybe political piece of drama is designed to make us think about a big issue or an event from history. We're going to be thinking about who cares and the artistic intention behind that play today. So the big question is, why would somebody make a play about this? I'm going to read you an extract from near the beginning of the play and we're going to read the final scene of the play. And from those two extracts, I'd like you to think about what the artistic intention of this play might be. Now near the start of the play, we see the characters here getting ready for school. Here's some words to kind of describe what that's like. At school Nicole, Jade and Connor are just like everybody else but when they get home, things are very different. Nicole started caring for her mom when she was four. Every morning Nicole helps her get washed, put on clothes and eat breakfast. Jade has always cared for her brother, but she never expected to look after dad as well. She now juggles to lots of appointments, to lots of prescriptions, to lots of assessment forms. Connor cares for his mom, but he doesn't like to talk about it. So that's something from the start of the play, and I wonder if you're getting an idea of what this play is trying to tell us maybe, let's have a look at the last scene of the play too. So I'm going to read this out, you can see that this three characters speaking now, and sometimes they speak together when it says all. Again, while I'm reading have a think, what do you think the message is then of this play? The future? I've already made a plan. I want to be a scientist like Dad but better, I'm going to get a doctorate and start a company that constructs groundbreaking medical devices. I've learned that not every illness has a cure, but every person deserves looking after. I've been offered a place at Salford university to study law. I'll be the first in my family to get a degree. I can't live with my mum forever. Then again, I can't leave. I met people from my school who were carers. I'd walk past them every day and I've no idea. It turns out anyone can be a young carer. We found each of them was standing together, fighting together and building a family. What would I say to young carers everywhere? You're not on your own, you're not on your own. You are not on your own. Okay so pause the video now and bear in mind, the introductory texts that I read to you and this final scene, I'd like to write down some sentences or phrases or words that you think are some of the artistic intention of this play, what's the message or the meaning behind it? When you've written five or 10 things, click Resume, we'll move on to the next part of the lesson. How did you get on then? I wonder if there were some things that started to jump out at you a little bit. These were two of the lines that really stood out to me, they were both from the final scene actually. This line, every person deserves looking after, to me that's kind of the message of the play that people who need care need looking after, but also the people who care for them, need looking after too. I really love this line. This was repeated three times at the end of the play, wasn't it? You are not on your own. And the use of the word you there, just really speaks directly to the audience, doesn't it? So for me, that was part of the message too, that the play was telling the audience that we're all in this together, that everybody is not on their own, whatever their circumstance. And we should kind of look out for each other. You might have written something different. I think there's lots of different messages that can kind of come from this play. What I'm going to ask you to do is, to create a still image to represent the artistic intention. I'll show you what I mean. So for the line, every person deserves looking after, I tried to create an image to show that, I kind of hugged myself really. And you can see that I kind of chose to use a fairly kind of you know, maybe a little bit thoughtful facial expression there. For the line you are not on your own, I kind of went for this reaching out image to show that I was being supportive and you can see my face so I was trying to be quite welcoming and almost smiling there. What you're going to do is, you're going to create your own images to represent the artistic intentions that you wrote down. If you couldn't think of anything, you can just have a go at the lines that I've got here. What you will also do is you will use your voice to speak the line over your image. For example my line here, you are not on your own, I would get into my image like this and I would speak my line, you are not on your own. Pause the video now and have a go at creating as many still images as you like. Remember to put your voice over the top and remember to use your face and your body language and your actions to really show that intention clearly. When you've had a go, click Resume and we'll move on to the next part of the lesson, where we're going to work more on our voice. Well done, I hope you enjoyed that activity. It's quite difficult sometimes to show the artistic intention without using words, isn't it? But that's one of the ways that we can represent the meaning of the play on stage, is by creating really, really strong images. So if you think of the final lines of the play, you are not on your own. If we were to see all the actors standing like this, that would kind of consolidate that meaning, wouldn't it? It will show us the meaning as well as hearing it. But I do want to work on our voice now because one way that we can show meaning is to use our voice. You can tell how people feel by the way they sound, can't you? Let's take the title of the play "Who Cares?" If I was to say that like this, who cares? You could tell straight away the way that I feel, I probably felt a little bit let down, a little bit like, you know, I felt like nobody cared about me. We call this vocal expression when we change our voice. And there are three ways we can change our voice, we can change the volume, where we go loud or quiet. We can change the tone, where we could speak in a low tone, or we could speak in a very high tone and we could change pace of our voice. So we can speak really, really fast, perhaps if we are really excited or very, very nervous or something like that, or we could speak slower to create a different effect. So the way that we say our words can really, really show a clear meaning. Let's have a go at this vocal expression activity together. We'll take it in terms to say the line "who cares?" The idea is to say it in a different way every time. Experiment with your volume, your tone and your pace. I'll go first then you can go next. Then me, then you, and we'll see how far we can get, ready? Who cares? who cares? Who cares? Who cares? Okay, well done. And if you want you can pause the video and you can think of as many different ways to say that as you like, and you can play around with being loud and quiet, fast and slow, and all the different features of vocal expression, but I hope you could tell that the way we said it, really began to show our feelings. Okay, we're going to look at choral speaking now. Can you remember what choral speaking means from when we introduced our key words? I'll read the statement, you decide when you think it's true or false by pointing at the answer that you think is correct. Choral speaking is a group of actors speaking together and sharing words, is that true or false? It's true, that's right. So when we're speaking our own lines, we can consider a vocal expression, and sometimes, and we saw this during the play, the final scene of the play, the dialogue from the characters can be spoken in unison together, signified where it says all in the script. So once we all start speaking together, we call it choral speaking. There are other ways to share dialogue too. So speaking altogether or speaking one word each, or speaking a line in canon where one person speaks and then the next follows. You can introduce echo, or overlapping your words. Speaking in unison on just one word maybe, playing around with choral speaking is really great and creates some really, really good effects. And we're going to experiment with that now. To practise our choral speaking, we're going to use these lines from the very, very end of the play. I think they're grey because I think they really sum up the artistic intention of the piece there. So here are some of the things that we're going to use to experiment with choral speaking, unison, echo, canon and chopping up the text. And we're also going to still think about our vocal expression, so our volume, our tone and our pace. Choral speaking means when more than one actor speak together and in different ways. So we're going to do it together me and you. We're going to speak some of the lines at the same time in unison. Those are the lines in pink, I'm going to speak some of the lines by myself. They're the ones in green, and you're going to speak some of the lines by yourself. They're the ones in grey. We're also going to experiment with some other features, so you can see the second line here. I'll never stop fighting. I'd like us to say that really loud. After I've said this line here, what about me? I'd like you to echo that. This line who is going to care for me, I'm going to whisper it and I'd like you to whisper it too when you echo it. You can see at the bottom here, we're just speaking one word each at a time and kind of chopping up the text together. Let's have a go and let's see what it sounds like. Give you an idea of what choral speaking is like can in practise, okay? After three, one, two, three, I'll never stop caring for my family. I'll never stop fighting, but some nights where I think what about me? Who is going to care for me? Then the alarm rings. I, a, and, starts. How did it go? Did you manage to keep in time with me? I wonder if you manage to kind of get the echoes in the right places. Experiment would be loud and quiet, and I wonder if we manage to, you know put the words together when we had one word each at the end there. You can practise that again if you want to rewind the video and have a go at, you know, rehearsing it and making it really perfect. I'd like you to come up with lots of different ways of speaking this speech. So other different parts that you'd like to speak in unison, is there a bit that you think should be said really fast? Is there a bit where you think an echo would work really well? I'm going to give you some time to speak this extract as many different ways as you can, and play around with it, have some fun and see if you can create different effects. So what is the artistic intention here? Are we trying to make the audience think? Well, then maybe we should say it in a way that would help that. So maybe we might slow down the pace. I take a breath, and it starts. Or what would be the effect if we said that a lot faster, for example? You get to choose, pause the video now, experiment with your choral speaking and your vocal expression, speaking these lines. And when you've had a go and you think you've finished, click Resume, and move on to the final part of the lesson. So well done on today's lesson, I've really enjoyed it. We've been looking at the artistic intention of the play, "Who Cares?" And then we've been trying to bring that kind of artistic intention to life, haven't we? So, first of all using some still images and then experimenting with our vocal expression, and finally learning about choral speaking. Thanks so much for all your hard work, I'll see you again hopefully in another drama lesson soon. If you or someone you know need some support or advice about some of the things we've discussed in the lesson today, you can visit the Who Cares Tour website for information on young carers and information about services that are available in your area. If you're interested in the play and finding out a little bit more about it, "Who Cares" is actually available as a radio play to listen to for free on demand at BBC Sounds right now. There's also a video recording of the show available, and if you'd like to register some interest in receiving that, then you can go to the, Who Cares Tour website again or you can email Lung Theatre directly. If you're a teacher, there's also some education resources available too. If you think you'd like to share some of the work you've done today, then you can do so on the Oak National Twitter page. Get with a parent or a carer, get your work together and show us your choral speaking versions of that final scene of "Who Cares." If not, don't worry. I hope you enjoyed it and hopefully I'll see you again in another drama lesson soon.

Unit Overview: Who Cares?: A devising unit

Lessons:

What has happened? Using Narration to make a story

Finding out more - Using Hot-Seating and Forum Theatre

Who Cares? by Matt Woodhead (part 1)

Who Cares? by Matt Woodhead (part 2)