Connecting Images
Context for this Strategy
If using text, then specific lines of text for each group to base their images.
Connecting Images invite students to create multiple images to tell a story or explore a theme or character. To be successful, students should understand the basics of Statues or Frozen Pictures/Stage Picture in order to be able to link images together. Connecting Images offers a way to explore multiple perspectives, to display specific moments that exist throughout a passage of text or over a period of time, or to illustrate contrasting ideas such as internal/external, before/after, and real/ideal.
Review how to build an effective frozen image. Invite the full group or groups to generate two to five frozen body images that explore the answer to a prompt, such as: Tell the story of the Three Little Pigs in five frozen images. Or, Explore the causes of the American Civil War through three different frozen images. Or, Show the main ideas of these four lines of Hamlet’s monologue in a specific amount of time (7-15 minutes). If useful, facilitate the construction of each image: We will begin with the first image in the sequence, you have five minutes to make this image. I will check in with each group to offer support where needed. Then facilitate the creation of each of the following images, with a short amount of time given to the making of each image in the sequence. Next, invite groups to explore how to transition between the images, and rehearse how they will move from frozen image to frozen image to create a fluid performance sequence. Invite each group to share their entire image sequence informally with another group or formally for the whole group.
- Describe what you saw in the first image. How did that change in the next image?
- What ideas, events/actions, or environments did each image explore? What clues did you see to help you draw that conclusion?
- What was the story? Or, how did the images relate to one another?
- How will you transition between images? How is the transition telling the story?
- It is helpful to keep the same person/people playing the same character/s (particularly a central character) in all the images. Consider how the character’s body, emotions, and/or actions shift between the images to tell a story.
- Use the space and your body to creatively depict different environments in your images.
- Play out a paired improvisation with action and dialogue. The teacher calls out “freeze.” Students freeze and readjust their bodies to capture the emotions, ideas, and forces at play in the frozen moment. Unfreeze and the scene continues. Repeat as desired.
- Social Studies: Have students make images of a historical event or figure over time. What key images best tell the story of this event or person?
- Reading/Writing: Give students a monologue with complex language (like Shakespeare) and ask them to circle five key words. Then have them make 5 connected images to represent each of the words.
- Science: Have students create multiple images to illustrate scientific concept like cell meiosis.
Neelands and Goode; Spolin; Wilhelm