Critical Creativity

Creating with Words - Theatre:  Potent Quotables is a great activity to check students understanding of context and meaning for difficult passages.  I would use this activity in my classroom by giving students a selection of Shakespeare quotes that are commonly misunderstood such as Romeo, wherefore art though Romeo, and others and then have the students create a design that embodies the meaning of the line.  It also works with designers and directors to see how they interpret lines and then transpose the meaning into bodies and visual things.

Creating with Words - English: Potent Quotables would be a great creative writing activity, but in a roundabout way.  Taking a poem or a line from a creative piece that someone has written and then creating a visual representation of that thing for social media will allow the students to look at what they see first and how they interpret the poem.  Then, once it's done as a class if they analyze each other's creations they can break down their interpretations to what kind of imagery they were seeing, what metaphors were chosen above others.  Looking at the literary devices that show up the most can give them hints about what are strong creative writing choices that they can include in their own writing.

Creating with Images - Theatre: Two Images, One Question is a great activity for playwrighting ideas.  I would use this activity to get students to think about what they would want to write with their plays.  What themes and images they would want to explore.  It really makes them focus it down to 2 images and one sentence so they have to clearly communicate to the class what their idea is through those little things so it has to be specific, which makes the writing stronger.

Creating with Images - English: Two Images, One Question is more than just the product though.  It's also about the process which is incredibly important too.  I would use this activity to work through a literary analysis of a text from a different time period or place.  It would require the students to know the piece, research the time and place and then effectively capture the important images and a question to communicate the things that relate to the play the most.

Creating with Sounds - Theatre: Audio Landscape is one I'd use with my design students to teach about establishing environment and mood. Multiple design areas can do that but using sound can be very effective.  They'd have to know what kind of story they'd like to tell, identify what sounds would go in that soundscape, figure out how to capture them, edit them, and then present them.  The discussion afterwords with the interpretation from the audience would be really valuable to the designer to see if their work landed like they wanted it to.

Creating with Sounds - English: Audio Landscape would be an interesting activity to have the students create a world of a novel or creative work they are writing, but not through words.  They are entirely restricted to sounds, but they have to create or recreate the environment and mood of a certain number of pages, or section of their writing.  The resulting discussion about what sounds mean to the writer or to the audience would be helpful and could create ideas of imagery the writer can use.

Creating with Body - Theatre: Dallowinian Party would be an excellent activity to teach and practice objectives in a low stakes way.  It's hard to get students to do a monologue or even a scene in front of people and tell them to focus on objective because they are in front of people.  This game takes away the stress because everyone is doing it at once and students can let go and play, which I think is important.  Periodic pauses in the game for side coaching and a strong objective stated at the beginning of the party would be necessary to have this activity be a success.

Creating with Body - English: Dallowinian Party is an activity I would use to break English students out of their shell and start thinking about action or plot.  It would help students to get to know each other a little better.  And it's one thing to sit down and think of action or plot points for a novel, but another thing to get up and do it yourself before writing it down.  Doing it yourself and then having to describe what you did creates a level of deeper understanding and complexity that would come out in their writing.

Creating with Stuff - Theatre: Board Game Remix is a great activity and I would use it to start a unit on devising.  In devising you kind of make it up as you go but you start from influences such as movement, sounds, themes, plot points, and start to put it together as it goes.  That's the same for this game.  I would have them do the activity as stated, and then in the discussion afterwords I would relate the things from the board games as their skills from theatre that they would use in devising.

Creating with Stuff - English: Board Game Remix would be a great way of coming up with ideas for works to write.  Focusing on the remix part I would have the students do the activity, then analyze why they chose what pieces of the games they chose.  Then we would as a class analyze what influences we have from our literary library and modern lives, then come up with ideas of things to write.

Creating with Social Media - Theatre: One Word to Rule Them All is a good activity to practice creative restraint, and what that can do for a work.  I would use this in a discussion about critical analysis or direction, where the students are only allowed to use one word, but they can supplement it with small drawings or influences.  It forces them to get specific, and put lot's of time into the thought process as well as the product.

Creating with Social Media - English: One Word to Rule Them All is an activity I would use again for creative restraint.  I would like to see students create this one word as an entire piece.  English students are so focused on being able to freely write and express themselves with many words, but how would they do when the entire piece is one word and some small supplements of doodles?  Can they still put as much thought and care into the piece when it's one word?  What about their audience, would the piece be different if they focused on a social media audience?  I'm interested in exploring that.

Things to explore further - Five course meal, Character Gallery, Sensory Map, Resume rational

Comments

  1. Daniel, I like your ideas for the "Potent Quotables" activity, particularly in reference to using it with texts like "Romeo and Juliet". "R&J" is often misquoted or taken out of context; this would require students to think more deeply and explore the context around the lines. Helping them to dive beyond surface level interpretations and questioning previous knowledge is an important skill and will help them to develop stronger script analysis skills.

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