Teaching Narrative Structure: Soap Opera Consequences
While devising scenes around a given topic or premise, students can often get so caught up in creating characters and practising the dialogue that they forget about developing a narrative structure for their scene – they’ll create an opening to get to the meat of the scene but then it just fizzles out or they keep improvising on the spot until the teacher calls a halt.
Soap Opera Consequences is a fun exercise to help encourage students to think about narrative structure, by taking a scene from a set opening line to a closing line. However, rather than the lines being random (or the same for each group), the different scenes slot together – one group’s closing line is the opening line of the next – to form a serial/soap opera. This highlights the need for each group to stay on task: if they don’t end with the correct line, it causes problems for the next group.
Based on the old parlour game “Consequences”**, each group are allowed to interpret the opening and closing lines however they wish, using whatever characters they feel are appropriate. The resulting soap opera serial is often amusingly disjointed as a result.
Divide the class into around five sub-groups (between 2-5 people per group – add more groups/segments to the soap opera for bigger classes) and assign each of them an opening & closing line as below:
Group / Opening line / Closing line1 / “It stinks in here, doesn’t it?” / “I’m back”
2 / “I’m back” / “I’m pregnant”
3 / “I’m pregnant” / “But I love you!”
4 / “But I love you!” / “You’re under arrest”
5 / “You’re under arrest” / “I hope I never see you again”
Allow 10-15 minutes for the groups to prepare. When older groups are nearly ready, give them another short task: ask them to form three freeze frames (with one line of speech from a character for each freeze if necessary) to tell a “previously on” story for their scene. These will be performed before their scene, to key the audience into their interpretation/world. (Very keen/musical groups may also want to devise their open theme tune!)
Encourage soap opera melodrama – but also let them use whatever style/genre each group wants for their own scene. As long as they open & close with their set lines, they should have complete freedom in between!
When ready, ask the class to perform the scenes in order (with freeze frame introductions if used).
Length of exercise: Allocate around half an hour – around 15 minutes planning and the same for showcasing in order.
Group size: Suggested for five sub-groups of between 2-5 people (so between 10-25 people). For smaller groups, skip a scene; for bigger groups, add another.
This exercise is taken from the following web page:
http://www.weheartdrama.com/336/teaching-narrative-structure-soap-opera-consequences/
**Consequences (game)
The game is traditionally played by writing the words on paper and folding the paper to hide the previous words before passing it to the next player. Each person takes a turn choosing a word or phrase for one of eleven questions, in this order.
1. Adjective for man
2. Man's name
3. Adjective for woman
4. Woman's name
5. Where they met
6. He wore
7. She wore
8. He said to her
9. She said to him
10. The consequence was… (a description of what happened after)
11. What the world said
Then the story is read (for example):
Mediocre Joe met transparent Kim at the bowling alley. Joe wore a seafoam green leisure suit. Kim wore a sandwich board. Joe said to Kim “During the last storm, we had a little party in the mud.” Kim said “She wasn’t that into me.” As a consequence, the band got back together. And the world said “Somehow, I think I saw this coming.”
Consequences can also be played in a drawing version where the first player draws the head, passes it unseen (by means of folding) to the second player who draws the body, then on to the third player who draws the legs. The composite person or creature is then revealed to all by unfolding the paper.
2