Lesson Overview:
Set designers play an important part in the visual world of a play. In this lesson, students identify settings in the play, Roald Dahl's Willy Wonka, creatively use their bodies to design a setting, and then plan a set for a scene in the play using a shoebox model. Students will write a description explaining their design choices.
Length of Lesson:
Two 45-minute class periods
Notes:
This lesson is particularly suitable for grades 3-5.
Instructional Objectives:
Students will:
- identify settings in the play Roald Dahl's Willy Wonka.
- use their bodies to create elements of the set design.
- draw a plan for a scene in the play.
- build a model set of the plan.
- write a description of the set.
Supplies:
- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
- Sketches of stage sets
- Photos of stage sets
- Shoe boxes or other boxes about the same size
- Card board or tag board
- Crayons, markers, colored pencils, or paint
- Pencil and paper
Instructional Plan:
To begin the lesson, introduce the four vocabulary words from the Vocabulary worksheet. Show pictures or provide examples of these words if possible. Discuss whether or not students have ever seen a play. Then, ask those students the following questions about their experience: "What helped you believe that you were in the world of the play? Was it the actors, sets, props, lights, sounds, or costumes?" Explain that all of these elements help to create the world of the play. When the curtain rises, we usually first see the set. This puts us in the atmosphere and location of the play. Remember that a set is a visual representation of a scene or environment created by a playwright.
In order to have a set convey just the right atmosphere and environment, the play's director and designers read the play and discuss the pictures, emotions, and feelings that come to their minds. They might consider and discuss the following questions:
- Should the set look real or make-believe?
- Should the set pieces be real (i.e. three-dimensional and working)or should they just be painted on a flat?
- Is the play a comedy or a drama?
- What colors will be used for lighting? How will this affect the emotions being expressed by the characters?
- How many settings are in the play? How easy is it to change from one setting to another?
The director and designers discuss their ideas and make decisions about the set based on what they believe will best convey meaning to the audience. They have several ideas that they will try out to see what works best.
After this discussion, the set designer makes a few sketches of each setting and shows it to the director. If the director agrees to the sketches, then small models are made so that the technicians who must build the set, the actors who must use it, and the other designers (costumes, props, lights, and sound), can see the 'world' of the play. Based on their input about the models, a final designs for sets are selected.
Explain that the play, Roald Dahl's Willy Wonka, is very similar to other plays in certain respects. The set designer
has the added help of Roald Dahl's descriptive words in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the visuals from the film, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. But the set designer may also find these additional resources to be a problem. Ask the students why they think this might be. For example, the audience may expect all of the elements of the book or the film to occur in the play. Most of these things cannot happen in live theatre, so other solutions need to occur that will still keep the feeling of the movie or the book but be adaptable for the format of theater.
Remember that in most cases when a stage play is created from a book, a different writer than the author of the book writes the stage adaptation. These writers, or adapters, are called playwrights. In Roald Dahl'sWilly Wonka, playwrights Leslie Bricusse and Tim McDonald created several settings for the play. They opened the prologue of the play with the following description of the set:
"An empty stage. Lighting suggests the moving cogs of an active factory. The sounds of this magical factory are heard: pings, boings, crackle-pops, whistles blowing, bursts of children's laughter...From time to time bubbles fill the stage, as well as bursts of smoke and fog. The lighting is constantly changing, constantly moving."
Other additional pieces are rolled onto the stage to set the scene:
- A moveable cart for the Candy Man
- The Bucket's shack
- A bank of television sets
- The gates of the chocolate factory
- A pink boat
- Fizzy lifting drink room with bubbles
- A TV room with a large television camera
Lights and sound effects help to create the rest of the stage images. The audience must rely on their own imaginations and the actor's pantomiming to help fill in the world of the play.
Ask students to think about how actors use their bodies to set a mood, to create emotion. Discuss what people could do with their bodies to help create a mood? List the ideas on the board and have students demonstrate. Then, push the classroom furniture out of the way so that there is an open space to work in. Explain that several students are going to be asked to use their bodies in a different way, not to show emotion or create a mood, but to create a living room. The rest of the class will take the important role of the audience. The audience will give the participants constructive feedback. Were they effective in performing their roles? What worked well? What should they improve upon? Remind students to pay careful attention to the directions since each one will eventually get to do something similar during in the lesson.
Begin by selecting a person to be the door into the living room. Ask the "door" to have a twist handle in the front and
back and to stand straight and still. Add a "sofa" of three people. Have a "floor lamp" stand by the "sofa." One student can
be a "coffee table". Another can be a "television." Two can become a "coat closet" with accordion-type doors. Add plants, chairs, bookcases, etc., until the "living room" is ready to be toured. Each "setting piece" gets into position. Only things that make noise (door, television) are allowed to do so. Select a member of the audience to walk through the room and use the pieces. Sit lightly on the sofa and chairs. Turn on the light, television, and doorknob. Place props on the tables and shelves that might be in the room. Hang a coat in the closet.
Once the tour is complete, thank the students who acted as set pieces and ask them to return to their classmates. Ask the audience to recall what worked well and what did not, and give reasons for their opinions.
Next, students who did not participate in the living room set will create a machine in Wonka's chocolate factory. Have the class listen and take notes of the description of the setting, as the chapter, "The Inventing Room" (Chapter 19), is read aloud from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. For this activity, select students who were not used in the "living room" exercise. Invite one student to the open space to begin a movement without sound. Tell students that since they will be repeating this movement over and over, they should do something easy to repeat. Deep knee bends and cartwheels would very difficult to keep doing. Suggest a simple movement. As students are called to join the machine group, ask them to think about height levels. Some should be on the floor, others at mid-level, while others stand. Each student touches the people they connect with in a safe way to make a machine. If they are having difficulty, ask them to think about how gears on a machine look. Turn off the "machine" and then start it up adding sounds. Have the machine speed up and slow down to a stop. Thank the "machine" and ask them to join the class. Ask the students what worked and what didn't. How close was this to what was described in the book? After a brief discussion, repeat the activity with the group of students who have not yet worked.
Remind the new participants that this machine should look and act different than the other machine. In both exercises, if a
student acts inappropriately or touches someone in an unsafe way, remove that student from the activity.
Inform students that the set designer for Willy Wonka needs help. There are too many scenes and he has run out of ideas for the following settings:
- Charlie Bucket's shack
- The Chocolate Room
- The Inventing Room
- The Fizzy Lifting Drink Room
- The Nut Room
- The Television-Chocolate Room
Distribute the worksheet, Shoe Box Set Design Prompt. Review the directions with the students. Remind them that the design must be an original design and not a copy of what the illustrator did in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or the art director created in the film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Suggest that students read descriptions of the scenes in the book and make sketches for their plans. Inform students that it is possible the sketches cannot be made into a model and that adjustments will have to be made. That is normal and happens to set designers all the time. That is why a plan should be made first. Each set will also need a written description of what scene it is for and why certain choices were made in the model. The writing must be in paragraph form and be written to inform.
Allow students time to make a choice and begin a plan in class. Assign the model making and the description writing for a weeklong project. Real items like dolls, dollhouse furniture, or fabric can be used in the model.
Once the projects are returned, display the models around the room along with their plans and written descriptions. Each person explains her/his design to the class.
Assessment:
Living Room or Machine Exercise
3 - Consistently maintained focus throughout the exercise
2 - Mostly maintained focus throughout the exercise
1 - Occasionally had focus in the exercise
0 - Was removed from the exercise
Sketch of Plan
3 - Original idea based on written descriptions in book
2 - Borrowed some ideas from another source
1 - Copied ideas from another source
0 - No work returned
Model of Set
3 - Creatively uses materials to represent ideas of the plan
2 - Attempts to use materials to represent ideas of the plan
1 - Little attempt is made to represent ideas of the plan
0 - No work returned
Written Description: Writing to Inform
3 - Clearly informs and describes reasons for choices
2 - Attempts to inform and describe reasons for choices
1 - Little attempt is made to describe reasons for choices
0 - No work returned
Written Description: Mechanics
3 - Written in paragraph form and follows all rules of spelling, grammar, capitalization, and punctuation
2 - Written in paragraph form, but has 1-2 errors in spelling, grammar, capitalization, or punctuation
1 - Not in paragraph form and/or misses three or more rules in spelling, grammar, capitalization, or punctuation
0 - No work returned
Extensions:
- Students can switch projects and evaluate each other's work. Set up a checklist for students to follow to evaluate the
work.
- Younger students can listen to a tape or an adult read the chapters of the book to help with the research of the
settings.
- This shoebox set lesson can adapted for any other play or piece of literature that the students have read.
Sources:
Print:
- Bricusse, Leslie and Tim McDonald. Roald Dahl's Willy Wonka.
- Dahl, Roald. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. New York: Puffin Books, 1964.
- Friedman, Lise. Break a Leg! The Kids' Guide to Acting and Stagecraft. New York: Workman Publishing Company, Inc., 2002.
- Peterson, Lenka and Dan O'Connor. Kids Take the Stage. New York: Backstage Books, 1997.
Web:
Authors:
-
Mary Beth Bauernschub, Teacher
Kingsford Elementary School
Mitchellville, MD
