When practicing Duo with students, make sure to focus on both performance and movement. Like all memorized pieces, your ability to effectively coach students is minimized if their piece isn’t memorized. If one or both students attend a practice session with most of the piece not memorized, encourage them to spend that practice session memorizing the piece instead. If the piece is memorized, here are some tips to keep in mind.
While emotion and performance are still most important, blocking and movement take more of a precedent in duo than other interp events because there are two performers. Like with other interp events, effective blocking/movement will not have as much of an impact if the performance feels off, but plenty of time should still be spent on blocking/movement.
Just like how multiple characters in an interp piece need to be different, so should different characters in a duo, including characters performed by different students. Just because a different performer is doing a character doesn’t mean the audience will automatically know who that character is or be able to distinguish it from the other performer’s characters, especially if the voices or stances are similar.
Because students can’t look at or touch each other, make sure to be on the lookout for that in practice. However, keep in mind that a practice session is different from a performance, and when blocking new movements or nailing down a scene, students may look at each other to help plan and understand each other. It may help to set clear guidelines at the beginning of practices (e.g. “Since we are blocking a new scene today, I won’t say anything about eye contact, but make sure to practice without looking at each other” vs. “Since we are just practicing your performance, I will make note of eye contact/touching.”)
In duo, students should not be only practicing with their partners during your practice sessions; rather, they must practice with each other on their own time. If you notice that the teamwork or collaboration isn’t there, encourage students to practice more together. If needed, you may have to do some teamwork activities with students so they work together better.
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