Stage Pictures Assignment

IB Literature and Performance Stage Pictures Assignment

In staging theatrical productions, it is useful to think of a story’s plot as a series of important moments and plan it out in a series of stage pictures. For this assignment, you will adapt Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” into a modernized version, but we will not fully stage the piece — we will instead create a “Stage Pictures” project. The steps below will help you develop this project into a type of visual storyboard for your adaptation.

1. Read, discuss, and take notes on the original story, “The Story of an Hour” (in class this week).

2. Break the story into time slots to see how long each section takes. Use the framework of a story plot to determine the setting, important moments in the rising action, climax, and resolution (in class Friday).

3. Decide how you want to modernize your adaptation. Determine the genre, setting, characters, overall plot, and pivotal moments leading up to the climax and resolution. 

4. Break your adaptation into at least 8 distinct moments that will tell the story in pictures.

5. Stage those pictures and take a photo of each one. 

6. Import those photos into iMovie and add a line or two of ext or dialogue that helps explain each one. Use the original story to help generate these sentences, but adapt it into modern language where appropriate.

7. Add music to help set the tone of the story and show when that tone changes.

8. Add a title page and a credits page — you should then have at least 10 slides/photos with text.

9. Export the project from iMovie and upload it to Youtube. 

10. Post the link on your blog.

The entire project is due before Winter Break, but we will take class time to work on it. This is an individual project. 

Here is a link to a project that has stage pictures only, not put into iMovie yet or added text or music. But it might help you get an idea of how to create Stage Pictures. These are done in the Black Box, but you can do yours outside, in a dorm room, at Cheshire Coffee, wherever you want to set your story. It does not have to be on an actual stage.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1iZ-mCaS4Fjb39aqM_gbgk1m_T189Bne8u5vE-gBnWpM/edit?usp=sharing