Julius Caesar • 2013 - Chicago Shakespeare Theater

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CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
Zing! Ball (without a ball)
(This activity takes five to seven minutes.)
✪ asks the students to make their imagination clear to the ensemble
✪ focuses the students on physical detail
This exercise builds on Zing! Ball. Take the ball out of the circle and set it aside. Take an imaginary Zing! Ball out of your
pocket. Grow this ball from a tiny rubber ball into a huge balloon. Using “Zing!,” toss the ball to a student across the circle,
and as it fl oats down, ask the student to catch it with the same weight and speed as you threw it. Then ask that student to
recreate the ball into a different weight and size, making it clear to the rest of the circle how they’ve changed it. In the same
way as Zing! Ball, work around the circle.
The wide range of vocabulary in Shakespeare’s plays can often be intimidating as one reads the scripts. The actor’s job is
to make the language clear, and this is often accomplished by very specific physical gesturing.
Wah!
(This activity can take between five and ten minutes)
✪ facilitates physical awareness and risk-taking
✪ encourages vocal projection
✪ helps actors increase their sense of timing and decrease response time
Ask your students to stand in a circle, facing in. They are no longer students, but fearsome warriors, and their hands, with
palms pressed flat together, have become their swords. To begin the game, one warrior raises his or her sword straight
up, then brings it down, pointing at another warrior in the circle. The warriors must make excellent eye contact, to avoid
confusion. As the warrior brings down his or her sword, he or she utters a fearsome battle cry, by saying, “Wah!” (Be
wary, warriors, of shouting, which comes from the throat and leads to laryngitis, a warrior’s worst enemy. Using the good
support and deep breathing from the beginning of your warmup will help you keep your vocal chords in top fighting condition.)
Once the warriors have made eye contact, the second warrior raises his or her sword, crying “Wah!,” and allows
the warriors on either side of her to slash his or her stomach, as they cry “Wah!” in unison. Then the warrior with his or
her sword up slashes down, making eye contact with someone else and saying “Wah!” and the game continues. Each
“battle” should therefore include three cries of “Wah!” Encourage your students to increase their speed and volume.
This is a silly game; remind your students that warriors don’t care about “looking cool” because they’re too busy fighting
unending battles. When a warrior misses his or her cue, stop the round and start it again until everyone is comfortable
being loud and making big physical choices.
Many actors will tell you that learning the lines is the easy part; making it come out of their mouths as if for the first
time is the hard part, especially with Shakespeare. Shakespeare can sound like a song, but how do you make it
sound like real people talking to each other?
Actors listen to each other, and try to respond to what they hear in the moment of the play. Listening is a very important
part of acting; it keeps the moment real—and the characters believable.
Julius Caesar • 2013