Week 5

Week 5 continued in much the same fashion as the past few weeks. At this point, I've worked with nearly all of the 5th graders on their characterization, so I've begun cycling back through and asking how they can refine their vision even further. During the process, I encountered an interesting behavioral obstacle in the students. I was meeting with a group of them and presenting questions about their characters based on a Chekhov acting technique called beats.

A beat is essentially comprised of a character's goal and emotional state at any given moment in a script. Beats can change very swiftly (even within the same line) and often help actors discover subtleties within their characters that would be difficult to perceive otherwise. Take for example the opening sequence from 1981's Raiders of the Lost Ark (Rewatch here if you'd like). 

Indiana Jones transitions through countless beats during the scene. At the start, we could say his beat is to admire, or something similar (beats are always phrased in the form of "to _____" or "to be _____" to emphasize the character's goal or emotional state). Seconds later, his beat becomes something along the lines of to protect (when he stops the guide from walking toward the idol) and then to analyze (when he says "That's what scares me" and pauses). Throughout the remainder of the opening, Indy's beat shifts between to focus (1:34 in the video), to be relieved (2:29), to panic (2;33), to be angrily submissive (4:07), and even to fear (6:01).

As audience members, we wouldn't normally be trying to actively acknowledge a character's beats, especially because they can change so quickly, but actors can find the method helpful to really dig into a character on a moment-to-moment basis. I was trying to engage the 5th grade students with the method of beats when an fascinating trend began to arise. The first student told me her beat during the scene was to be scared, a reasonable analysis of her dialogue and the context of the scene overall. However, each student afterward also answered that their beat was to be scared, or some vanishingly small variation on that theme. Everyone was simply taking the idea of the first student and running with it, stunting any real characterization or analysis in the process. It was almost as if the importance of individual thought was diminished in their minds in favor of giving a safe answer because I approved of to be scared and they knew it was an acceptable response as a result. 

Initially, I took the phenomenon as evidence of my personal lack of professional educational skills. However, Ms. Grilliot (my extremely helpful mentor), who teaches the same group of students, informed me that she noticed the same trend on a larger scale. While the possibility of the pattern being a fluke (once again) exists, it could also be an age-related trait and therefore bears relevance to the study.

Thanks for reading.