Fourth Grade Standards Met:
VA4MC.1 Students engage in the creative process to generate and visualize ideas.
VA4MC.2 Students formulate personal responses to visual imagery.
VA4MC.3 Students select and use subject matter, symbols, and/or ideas to communicate meaning.
VA4CU.1 Students investigate and discover the personal relationship of artist to the community, the culture, and world through making and studying art.
VA4CU.2 Students view and discuss selected artworks.
VA4PR.1 Students create artworks based on personal experience and selected themes.
VA4PR.4 Students plan and participate in appropriate exhibition(s) of artworks.
VA4AR.2 Uses a variety of approaches to understand and critique works of art.
VA4C.1 Students apply information from other disciplines to enhance the understanding and production of artworks.
ELA4W1 Students produce writing that establishes an appropriate organizational structure, sets a context and engages the reader, maintains a coherent focus throughout, and signals a satisfying closure.
ELA4W2 Students demonstrate competence in a variety of genres.
ELA4W3 Students use research and technology to support writing.
ELA4W4 Students consistently use a writing process to develop, revise, and evaluate writing.
ELA4LSV1 Student participates in student-to-teacher, student-to-student and group verbal interactions.
ELA4LSV2 Students listen to and view various forms of text and media in order to gather and share information, persuade others, and express and understand ideas.
Lesson Plan:
One of the most prominent notions that arose in theater during the Victorian Era was the idea of the burlesque, and within this realm, that of parody. The Encyclopedia Brittanica printed in 1911 defines “parody” as “an imitation of the form or style of a serious writing in matter of a meaner kind so as to produce a ludicrous effect.” Parody in theater essentially makes fun of itself. For this exercise, and in order to experience theater as one of the players during the Victorian era, the students will (in groups of two or three) first select one of their favorite songs. The teacher might limit the songs to something with a plot, something from a movie or a play the class has already studied in class, and utilize songs or scenes from it. Shakespeare, in fact, was often the parodied drama during the Victorian era, and in one such parody of Romeo and Juliet, the cast included twenty-three musical numbers.
First, the students will develop a theme for their parody. For the categories of theme, we have developed two options, although they do not have to be used separately from one another. The first option is to choose a contemporary theme. This option may also prove helpful to grasp the idea of the parody before undertaking the second option. The teacher may choose to show some age-appropriate, contemporary famous parodies in order to show what a successful parody looks like, in that it makes fun of the original piece of theater, but uses the same media to do so. (Some parodies the teacher may include are songs by Weird Al Yankovic, the Saturday Night Live skit of Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” music video, or Monty Python and the Holy Grail, to name a few.) After viewing successful parodies, the students may choose a song or skit they would like to parody. Once the theme is developed, the students will write a script or lyrics for the production, and after a period of practice, will perform it in front of the class.
Some complexities the teacher may add, if necessary, are character studies about the persona they will have; memorization of lines; or even a study as to how the parody is funny. There is also the option of costume for the play, and where the skit may be performed.
Option two for the study of parody is to choose an element of Victorian theater, music, society, or even an object to parody in a skit. (This is why option one is suggested for a warm-up exercise to this one: so the students can have an idea of what they are supposed to do before confronting a more difficult medium.) Another idea for the interpretation of option two is to choose a contemporary theme, but portray it in a Victorian setting, using props from the Traveling Trunk. (See “Jane Austen’s Fight Club.”) Or vice versa. (See “Othello rap” from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare Abridged.) For this option, all the same complexities may be added, and the teacher may also choose to make a competition from the activity, with the reward being an encore performance in front of another group of peers.
