Storytelling through Creative Movement

Overall Expectations

This innovative and educational school program will explore different elements of creative movement, physically participate and foster engagement by acting out stories through personal expression and critical thinking. Participants will consider how characters look, move, sound and what gestures and voices make characters seem real (e.g., character development, setting, pantomime, dramatic structure & psychology).

Our mission is to encourage and enhance youths’ ability to communicate and express their character, identity, feelings, and understanding of who and what they are through physical storytelling within an inclusive and respectful environment that is diverse and inclusive.

As the young people progress, they will have the opportunity to integrate decision-making through the art of Pro Wrestling by developing their character through role-playing as the Hero or Baby Face (e.g., Protagonist) and the Adversary or Heel (e.g., Antagonist) in a safe and healthy environment where they can develop new skill sets. Our curriculum stresses the development and integration of specific theatre skills within a cooperative learning environment that is emphasized through Self-expression, flexibility, self-confidence, and self-discipline.

Our Storytelling through Creative Movement Program offers youth a continuum of theatre experiences that move well beyond the introductory and exploratory foundation skills and activities outlined. The focus of our program is a full-scale production of a scripted movement skillset.

Location

A WFPC Coach and 18×18 foot ring will be brought in to your school to conduct the program on-site, with the option to have your students bused into the WFPC depending on space, location and availability.

Character Development

In Pro Wrestling, Character Development is the craft of giving a character a personality, depth & motivations that propel them through a storyline. Character Development is how a character evolves throughout the course of a storyline.

Believable characters are unique & three-dimensional and not so different from real life so our goal is to develop their character’s growth in the face of adversity, much like real people grow and adapt to their own real-life situations. We will help young people establish a character’s motivations and goals, choose a voice, do a slow reveal, create a struggle, give a character’s backstory, describe a character’s personality in familiar terms & paint a physical picture of their character.

Psychology

The Psychology of Wrestling, which is essentially a wrestler’s in-ring acting ability to make a wrestling match look like a real struggle, understands that onlookers live vicariously through their characters by cheering the “baby” who outperforms the “heel” who then has to resort to less traditional movements to outduel the baby which in turn creates more sympathy and emotion for the baby where viewers root for him to achieve victory while simultaneously hoping for the defeat of the heel!

When young people start to understand this concept of storytelling and apply it in their movements, it becomes an incredibly rewarding and satisfying form of expression, creative movement, and engagement.