Newspaper, duct tape, pipe cleaners, and more!

Last week ended with a flurry of activity as the class concentrated on way to develop and reveal characters through dialogue, description, and interaction. On Wednesday, we turned our six word short stories into flash fiction, or short-short stories -- but, of course, there was a twist! We traded notebooks and wrote flash fiction which incorporated one of our partner's six word short stories. The results of this endeavor were impressive, and can be found posted on the blog.

Next, it was time for musical chairs. As the clock tower chimed out that Burt Bacharach classic, "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head," the students circled around the circle of desks, finally stopping with the last drop of the song at one of their classmates' desks. On the desks, the students had placed six random objects, found in their dorm or elsewhere. The students were then faced with a challenge: creating a character based on the combination of objects. From a world-traveler who carried her rhinoceros in her neon green blimp to a janitor facing hard times at home to an over-achieving student struggling to survive athletically and academically, the students created strong "round" characters -- and then teamed up with another character they found interesting, all in the interest of playwriting.

Our class on Thursday harkened back to that great and secret VAMPY tradition: paper theater. The students gathered back into their character teams and wrote 10 to 15 minute one act plays featuring their two characters. However, we here at VAMPY are overachievers, and this instance was no exception; not only did the students play the role of writer, but they also served as actors, directors, costume designers, and set designers. With a stack of newspapers and a sack full of colored duct tape, the students created costumes and sets. The day ended in a series of performances which were hilarious, touching, and, well, hilarious.

Friday morning saw us once again exploring the idea of character and the craft of dialogue, this time in what can often be a very difficult form: the dramatic monologue. We read three poems by the master of the monologue, Robert Browning, who was inspired by the dramatic soliloquy and would later inspire our own monologues. Then, each student received a photograph of a person who, by all appearances, fit into a certain social stereotype: emos, jocks, nerds, skaters, goths, and so on and so forth. The students wrote what they knew about the person just from the photograph -- and then, of course, the great challenge of the day. Each student had to write a dramatic monologue with the person in their photograph as a speaker -- but, in the course of the poem, the speaker had to reveal a secret that showed they were not at all what one might assume.

After the arduous task of monologue crafting, we spent the afternoon with The Plastics, watching Mean Girls, one of Ms. Bolden's all-time favorite movies. Mean Girls served not only as a reward for everyone's very hard work, but also as the basis for the weekend assignment: each student was required to "infiltrate" a different social group, joining up with people they don't typically hang around with and learning about their culture, customs, and language.

Post-Script: Haiku

So You Think You Can
Dance? The Boulder weeps, knowing,
cableless, she can't.

♠

Really, The Boulder
could never dance anyway.
No rhythm? Disco arm!

♠

Or jumping, pumping
one fist in the air -- official
dance of VAMPY.