Activity: Dramatic Monologues

Source: Paul Corrigan, ALPS Poets-in-the-Schools Program, New York State Education Department (ultimate source unknown)

Level: Intermediate-Senior High

Language Skills Emphasized: Writing; also can be used for speech and literature study

Purpose: To stimulate writing in a distinctive voice; to help students become aware of how speech can provide clues to character; to develop awareness of characterization genereally; can be used to introduce the genre of poems known as dramatic monologues.

Materials: A set of large, character-revealing photographs of individuals (e.g., a cowboy dressed for a rodeo and sitting on a fence, a miner covered with coal dust, etc.) Preferably, these should be in color and laminated, and the person in the picture should be looking at the camera; however, variety in the pictures is also important because students will be looking for ones that are particularly interesting to them.

Procedure:

1. Introduce the concept of dramatic monologues by showing a picture and reading a monologue that might have been spoken by the person in the picture.
2. Pass the laminated photographs around the room. Be sure to have more photos than there are students. Each student is to choose a photograph that "speaks" to them--a character whose voice they can easily imagine.
3. With the photographs of their choice in front of them, students draft monologues with the person in the picture as the speaker.
4. Students share their drafts, either with the whole class or with partners. Usually, the whole class is eager to hear what others have written. The writer displays the photograph as she reads.
5. Treat the drafts as other daily writing--give students the option to confer, revise, polish, and publish their monologues.
6. [Optional activity for high school] Begin the reading of well-known dramatic monologues such as Browning's "My Last Duchess." Ask students to infer the character traits of the speaker and/or to visualize the speaker (or even draw the speaker).
7. [Optional for middle school] Add character traits to personal or class vocabulary lists kept in notebooks.

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