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<< backin Their Children
Build a Home Theater
(Without a Big-Screen TV)
• Make a performance space.
To create a stage, just help kids find a space large enough to allow performers to move about. The end of a living room or a grassy spot in the yard shoulf work fine. You don't need a curtain. Show the kids that actors who are not performing should stand "off-stage", over to the side
• Keep things simple and tailor your efforts to the interests of your children.
Don't worry about scenery unless your kids really enjoy making it. Label a chair, table, or box "refrigerator" or "camel" if the story calls for them, or just pretend they are there. Costumes aren't necessary. Forget them, unless your child enjoys maiing paper hats, draping old sheets, or pulling old clothes from closets and trunks and dressing up in them. Encourage your children to spend their time and energy on the performance itself, rather than on lots of details.
• Arrange for an audience.
The experience will be most rewarding if kids get to perform for someone. Plan for the children to put on a play or series of skits and invite friends and familty, or just arrange for Mom and Dad to be fully attantive.
• Suggest that children develop their own television shows.
They can draw pictures and record the dialogue and sound om a tape recorder, or perform for a video camera.
• Find books of jokes, riddles, and tongue twisters.
These can build reading, speech, and performance skills and allow children to perform without a lot of preparation.
• Encourage kids to dramatize familiar stories.
They will learn to develop characters and act out a scene without having to memorize a script.
• Search at the public library or video store for examples of old-time vaudeville, comedy sketch shows, or radio plays.
Your kids will be exposed to new types of performance and may get excites about ventriloquism, tap dancing, clean stand-up comedy, juggling, creating sound effects, magic, etc.
* Help children find scripts for skits, short plays, or selections from longer plays.
These can be memorized, read as reader's theater, or performed with puppets.
Resist the temptation to take charge. Remember: the more children do themselves, the more they learn!
Stage Positions
Most of the time, you will be acting on a proscenium stage. That is a stage that has a large arch (proscenium arch) that frames the front- most portion of the acting area.
Almost all the acting takes place on the stage behind the area framed by the arch (This is the area with the various letter labels.) The shallow stage area in front of the arch is called the apron. The apron can also be used a an acting area.
The letter labels define general stage areas.
"C" is the center of the stage.
"D" is "down" stage, meaning closer tot he audience.
"U" is "up" stage, meaning closer to the back wall.
"R" and "L" are "stage right" and "stage left". However (This is really important to understand) stage right is the actor's right as the actor stands on the stage facing the audience. Stage left is the actor's left as the actor stands on the stage facing the audience. If the actor is facing upstage (toward the back wall), stage right and stage left are determined as if the actor were standing on the stage facing the audience. So the left side of the stage is always the left side. It doesn't change when the actor faces different directions. The right side of the stage is always the right side. It also doesn't change when the actor face different direction.
