Spoon River Exercise EXPLAINED – Part II: The Animal in All of Us By Katherine Schreiber
Read the first article in this series here. You’ve picked and memorized the poem. You’ve chosen an emotion to underscore the last two lines. You’ve researched, written, and presented to the class your character’s biography. You’ve come up with a parallel dialogue to inject a more visceral subtext to the monologue you’ll be reciting in front of the class (choosing a specific person, real or imagined, to tell it to, with the intent of giving or getting something from this individual). Now what? It’s time to take a trip to the zoo. Seriously.nnSchreiber has each Spoon River exercise participant spend a day studying an animal they feel best embodies their character’s personality. Students observe the animal’s movement, shape, as well as its relation with and reaction to other animals or people within its environment. They then attempt to replicate the animal’s center of gravity (Does it move from its belly? From four legs? From two? Does it startle easily? How does it approach prey? How fast or slow is it?) as they assume their chosen character in class.
Schreiber finds this lends an entirely new dimension to all Spoon River poem recitations. And it’s a great tool to keep in your back pocket when taking on future roles. Now it’s time to get up in front of the class and put it all together.nnMove from the animal’s center of gravity, keep in mind the parallel dialogue you’ve come up with to underscore the lines you’re spouting to achieve that chosen emotion, and deliver this poem to that imaginary or real person. Congratulations, you’ve just completed Schreiber’s version of the Spoon River exercise. So what was the point? Schreiber says this is one of the best ways to practice building a role — creating a character that’s real and believable from the minimal prompts one gets from words on a page. (Poems from Edgar Lee Master’s Spoon River Anthology also happen to be rife with characters and conveniently suited for memorization and recitation without being too abstract.) The Spoon River exercise also enables students “to process how to get to a result,” adds Schreiber —i.e.: the emotion you chose, “rather than just play it.” The ultimate goal is to find parts of the character you’ve chosen inside of yourself. (To put interleave your own truths with the character’s). As well as to inject the most honest (read: believable) subtext into the lines you’re reciting in the interest of more naturally eliciting whatever emotion you’ve chosen to grace the final two lines.nnThe entirety of this work is certainly not easy. It takes a lot of effort. (Arguably, another function of the exercise is to show students just how much effort is required to truly take on a role.) But, as Schreiber reminds us, “good actors stand out from lazy actors by doing their fair share of research.”