Course Title:Off-Off-Off-Off-Off Broadway
“Off-Off-Off-Off-Off-Broadway” was an 8 week art class I taught at Penn State, focusing on theatricality in visual art to twenty six middle and high school students. This does not mean that every project has to be about the theater, but rather the bold, expressive, and emotional elements that are important to great theatrical productions. The projects in this class will encourage the students to think who they are, create new identities, and learn about others in the class. We will also look at artists who take a theatrical approach to art making such as Frida Kahlo, Georges Melies, Rembrandt Van Rijn, and Cindy Sherman.
Theater is a very bold and expressive medium. The goal of the following projects in this class will be to get students to explore their identities, interact and communicate with other students in order to gain a better understanding of themselves and others. Students will often be asked to discuss what they are doing and work together towards a common goal, which will in order to form a community in the classroom, much like the community of a theater company. The class will also teach students about different storytelling techniques, from creating short performances, storyboarding and single image narratives, as well as creating an original character. Projects will have a focus, however will also be open enough to accommodate what the student is interested in making.
Lessons
Self Portrait
In order to get to know the students better and to get an idea for what style of drawing each student did. Students were asked to think about who they are as a person and an artist, and to create a self portrait that has both an emotional element as well as an autobiographical element
Mask
Students created a cardboard mask based on their fictional characters. The students were shown a demo on Xacto knife safety to create the shapes for their masks. These masks were created for their improvised performances.
Characters
Students were asked to create their own original fictional character and create a short narrative about whose personality and interests this character is including, and where their character resides. Students were shown a presentation on the different character archetypes, like hero, villain, and everyperson, to give the students a wide variety of options for characters to create. These characters were used in the rest of the assignments for the course.
Performance
Students were taught about improvisation, through jazz, exquisite corpse drawings, and looking at the paintings of Salvador Dali. The students then split into groups, and used their masks and other props around the room to create an improvised performance for the rest of the class.