More Costumes and Props

Guest Post by Tamara Pogin SLP

We took this weeks practice acting class outside to a part stage. The wind nearly blew our costumes and props across Lake Superior, which was right behind our stage but it was fun for the actors to be out in the sunshine on a new stage.This week during Stage Play acting classes, our young actors really got excited about costumes and props. Many of them related to costumes and some shared that they had a Spiderman, Batman, or Ariel costume hanging in their closet at home. We explained that props were things that actors used on stage for a scene. During the prop game this week, we asked our actors to stretch their imaginations and come up with different ways of using ordinary objects such as an empty picture frame and a piece of a floating pool noodle. The actors were up for it! The acting buddies got things off to a great start by demonstrating the idea of the game and generating some ideas for uses of the props for kids that might get stuck. Many of the actors came up with their own ideas. Some of my favorites were using the pool noodle as a light saber, a black tablecloth as a “cloak of invisibility,” and an empty picture frame as a camera.

The costume game consisted of two actors choosing a costume and then acting in a short scene made up by the director, usually consisting of one line from each actor and a little stage direction. Our costumes this week consisted mainly of a box of hats and some scarves. We discovered in our pre-teaching sessions that it was much easier to let our actors choose their own costumes for this exercise. When the costumes were dictated, some actors didn’t want to wear them. Some didn’t even want to do the scene. However, when the actors chose their own costumes, all of them were willing to participate in the scene made up “on the spot” by the director. We realize that in the acting world, many times characters and costumes are assigned. Right now, our objective is that our actors get acquainted with becoming another character and interacting with another actor onstage.