Skip to main content

Drama

I'm teaching a drama class this quarter. Here is a list of a few of the hero-villain scenarios I will use this week. Some are silly, some are more realistic. Adapting a lesson I found on Matt Buchanan's childdrama.com, I plan to have students pair up and choose from a hero or villain index card pile (one chooses a hero, the other a villain). It could mean that Indiana Jones will face off against the shark from Jaws, or Optimus Prime will take on the Wicked Witch of the West. Whatever characters they choose, they must choose from the scenario pile, then plan and act it out. It should be good sport.

The villain has set a house on fire. In it is trapped a baby.
The villain puts poisoned cookies on a children’s plate. The mother is about to serve them.
The villain plans to drop millions of pieces of paper on a crowded city and give paper cuts to all who are in it.
The villain is incredibly intelligent and wants to beat the superhero in chess.
The villain plans to infect the water supply with a virus that will cause the population to become zombies.
The villain wants to destroy a large water tower, which will flood a nearby town.
The villain is planning to attack the president.
The villain is using music to hypnotize a group of people and lead them off of a cliff.
The villain has shut down all the power to the city, trapping people in elevators and subways.
The villain has placed bombs below strategic places in a city and plans to detonate it, sinking the city.
The villain is playing show tunes on a city-wide loud speaker, making the citizens go crazy.
The villain has put kittens in a plastic container and is planning to send them to Antarctica.
The villain has kidnapped the Queen of England and plans to drop her in the ocean.
The villain has hacked into the city’s prison security system and plans to let all the criminals free.
The villain has taken all the musical instruments, radios, and ipods away and plans to destroy music forever.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Nice Guy Fallacy

I read part of a poem recently by one of my favorite poets. It reads: I envy not in any moods The captive void of noble rage The linnet born within the cage That never knew the summer woods. I envy not the beast that takes His license in the field of time Unfetter'd by the sense of crime To whom a conscience never wakes. Nor what may call itself as bles't The heart that never plighted troth But stagnates in the weeds of sloth Nor any want-begotten rest. I hold it true, whate'er befall I feel it, when I sorrow most 'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all. At base, Tennyson contrasted a life of risk, and consequent pain, with one of security. He sides conclusively with the life of risk, and says he fails to envy those who have faced no hardship. I agree with him; and, for good or ill, his words are just as relevant today as they were in the nineteenth century. Like then, there are those today who choose to live their lives with as little risk as...
2 comments
Read more

Experiment

My social studies students and I are studying Islam right now. The other day, we were reading about one of the Five Pillars, zakat (charity in Islam that means "that which purifies"). Muslims believe that giving away money helps to purify it and also "safeguards [them] against miserliness" (1). I asked the class if this was true, that giving money away makes us less greedy. They generally agreed that it does. I wanted to test whether or not they really believed this, so I handed a volunteer a $10 bill. I told the class that I would ask for the bill back the next day. I said that they should pass the bill around among their classmates, and that as a result, there would be no way for me to know who had the bill. For that reason, whoever wanted to keep the money could keep it. Even if I did learn who kept it, I told them, I would not punish that person. I wanted them to be motivated by their own honesty. The next day, I asked for the bill, and a student handed it to me...
Post a Comment
Read more

Persuasion

At different points in history, governments have devoted men, women, and resources to try to persuade others to their side. One significant example of this occurred in Germany under Adolf Hitler. Hitler knew how important it was to make sure the German people were on his side as leader of the country. One way he did this was by controlling what people heard. Specifically, near the beginning of World War II, Hitler made it a crime for anyone in Germany to listen to foreign radio broadcasts. These were called the “extraordinary radio measures.” He did this to ensure that Germans weren’t being persuaded by enemy countries to question their loyalty to Hitler. He knew that a German listening to a radio broadcast from Britain might persuade that German to believe that Great Britain was the good guy and Hitler the bad guy. This was so important, in fact, that two people in Germany were actually executed because they had either listened to or planned to listen to a foreign radio broadcast (one...
Post a Comment
Read more