The Music and the Mask: Unrequited Love in Performance
A Lesson for Drama 2

Teacher: Scott Sophos
Discipline: Theater Arts
Grade Level: 9-12
Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night

Time: 2 ninety minute periods

LEARNER OUTCOME:

The student will demonstrate the ability to explore the creative process through theatrical activities and to apply theatrical knowledge, principals, and practices to collaborative theatre presentations.

OBJECTIVE (Including Indicators for Learning):

The student will be able to write, rehearse, and perform a scene from Shakespeare’s TWELFTH NIGHT in order to:

• Construct a script and collaborate with other actors to convey meaning to an audience
• Develop multiple interpretations for scripts and visual and oral production ideas for presentation
• Experiment with various kinds of theatrical presentations ,i.e. comedy, drama, cabaret, musical comedy, etc.

Warm-up

Students will spend 5-7 minutes writing a BCR in their journals which answers the following question: How would you behave around someone who you were in love with, yet you knew was unattainable to you or in love with someone else?

Guided Practice:

Students will share and discuss responses to the warm-up. Instructor will then give a synopsis of the plot of TWELFTH NIGHT. Instructor will also emphasize the use of music as a metaphor for love in the play….”If music be the food of love, play on”, and ask the question “Do you think a play which uses music as metaphor should have a lot of music in it?” Discuss.

Pass out copies of Act 2, Sc. IV of TWELFTH NIGHT. Have students spend some time glancing over the text on their own. Discuss what they understood and what they did not.

Then, have the students stand in a circle and have a “round robin” reading of the scene in which each student reads one line. Discuss the use of language, and how Viola professes her love to Orisino without really telling him that she loves him. Discuss the song sung by Feste in the scene. Is death better than unrequited love?

Then, point out that the play has been developed into several Broadway musicals, two of which used original music (MUSIC IS…. , YOUR OWN THING), and one which used extant music written by Duke Ellington (PLAY ON). Play some of the music from the cast albums of YOUR OWN THING and PLAY ON. (These are both available from Amazon.com. There is no cast album for MUSIC IS….). Discuss how music can add to and change a scene.

INDEPENDENT ACTIVITY

Students will break up into groups of three. Each group will be assigned one of the following as a project:

Project One( for students with a proficiency in music) : In the computer lab or library, research what music was used in the scene during Shakespeare’s time. Either find a recording or the sheet music, and perform the scene for the class with the original music placed to Feste’s song.

Project Two: ( For students less proficient in music) Research a contemporary song which has the same theme or mood as the lyric’s in the scene. Perform the scene replacing the original song with the contemporary song. Students may either use the original text or create a modern version in the form of soap opera, “after school special”, etc.

Project Three (For more creative students who are not proficient in music) Students may rewrite the scene in contemporary English, using “hip hop”, rap, or slang, as if it were going on today at your high school. They may replace Feste’s song with a hip-hop poem, def poetry poem, or rap song.

Students will spend the second class period putting finishing touches on and performing the scenes for class. The scenes need not be memorized.

ASSESMENT:

Students will be graded on a rubric which includes class participation, how well they worked together as a group, and if the final presentation included all the elements required of each project. For extra credit, students may memorize lines, costume, and add scenic elements as appropriate.

CLOSURE

Students will write an ECR describing what they thought was the best group presentation, and how it conveyed to the audience the theme of unrequited love found the original script.

NOTE: This lesson can also be adapted for other plays, such as THE TAMING OF THE SHREW (KISS ME, KATE!) and THE COMEDY OF ERRORS (THE BOYS FROM SYRACUSE, DA’ BOYZ)