Our semester is flying by! With our characters and settings in place, in Week #4, our ensembles turned their devising energy to PLOT.

*The Monday B ensemble warms their hands over the campfire during warm up*

After our usual dance parties and warm ups, we used our check in question to think about an important plot element: Conflict. Every story has a problem or a conflict that the characters try to solve. This week we asked our ensembles:

What is a problem you have solved?

This was a thought provoking question. We talked about all different kinds of problems - from school bullies and annoying siblings, to cooking fails, to losing or breaking special items. Claire said her favorite shirt was dirty, so she had to do laundry. Lucas shared a story about getting lost in Target and going to the security guard so they could page his mom. One time, Sam got locked out of his house so he went to his neighbor’s house to ask for help. Matt said he has a problem of being too hard on himself, so he works on being more relaxed and giving himself more grace. Talking about all of these problems and solutions help us to think about some tactics and objectives for our characters, but also help us think about our own resilience.

The highlight of this week was a new favorite ensemble game called Magic Wand. This is a game that requires imagination, listening, and saying yes to each other’s ideas. The premise is pretty simple. On person has a magic wand and they can use it to cast a spell on the rest of the group. Everyone acts that spell out until the spell-caster puts a stop to it. Then they can pass the wand on to someone else. People really got into the ceremony of passing the wand through their Zoom screens and also embellishing their spell-casting with sweeping arm movements and magic words. New actor Dan even whipped out an imaginary spellbook before turning everyone into wicked villains. We cast love spells, laughing spells, sneezing spells, and we turned each other into witches, The Jonas brothers, many different kinds of animals, chefs, and so much more. This was a fun, light-hearted game that we definitely want to play again!

From there it was time to move into our devising groups to talk about Plot.

*A slide from our Story Elements Visual Aids series depicting “Plot Mountain”*

Our teaching artists paired two characters together in one story and two characters together in a different story. It was up to our actors and facilitators to fill in the blanks by answering questions like:

How did these characters meet?
How do they feel about each other?
What problem do they have to face?
How does our story end?

*Lawrence talks with Emily, Jake, and facilitator Rachel as they use Jamboard to devise a portion of their story.*

Everyone had a chance to contribute a little bit to each story and let’s just say there were many surprises and plot twists along the way. Teaching artist Katie said “I stepped into rehearsal thinking I sort of knew where things were heading but I had no idea!” Take a look at the plot outline for the story she is directing about The Simurgh and The Taniwha: