Week 1, Drama.

Drama Workshop

I love watching movies, theatre and musicals as well. All of these are performance-related modes of drama. My only experience with drama myself would be back in my primary school years where I always took part of the school's end of year performances. As an outgoing and fearless child, drama was fun and performing in front of an audience was not that different to telling my parents what I'd learnt at school that day. But as I grew out of primary school, the outgoing child in me stayed but the fearless one developed a friend named minor stage-fright. I don't faint with nervous anxiety but I don't feel the pleasure in acting or singing in front of an audience I'm not 100% comfortable with. So when I saw that drama was part of the creative arts unit, I must admit, the nervous friend 'stage-fright' jumped on fearless. 

In the first drama workshop, as a warm-up activity we walked around the room making eye-contact with every person we walked past. Some of the students I knew well, some I didn't know at all. So surprise, surprise... making eye contact with "strangers" was uncomfortable and even though time passed it was still quite awkward. However, as a teaching strategy, this warm-up activity in a primary classroom where all the students would know each other, would be a good one to set the children into the focused mood you want them to be in. 

Topic: The Green Children. 

Activity 1: 

Read the excerpt from 'The Green Children' and generate a list of questions on what we would like to find out further about the story, the characters etc. 

  * It was interesting to see that overall, our class had focused mainly on the green children themselves and almost forgot about the other characters in the text (ie: Village people). 

Activity 2: 

In groups, we produced a freeze-frame (Also called still-scene/still-frame) of a section of the text and delivered one line of speech each in the voice of the character we wished to portray. 

Tip: 'Tap-in' the students and emphasise they are to say one sentence each. 

Tapping the students to 'life' allows the audience to hear each character at a time without overlapping conversation and if a line is in need of being repeated, we can tap the student again. By setting out that only one sentence is to be said, it gives each child an equal chance as the students who enjoy speaking out and the students who prefer to stay quiet will all have to participate and contribute in equal parts. 

Activity 3: 

Draw a map of the village in which the green children were found. 

The village map was to have the cave area where the green children were found, the main source of produce for the village and a threat to that source. 

Our group decided that our source would be beef and bread. Hence, we drew cows in the paddocks and a farm for wheat. Our village name was MOOCH and the threat to our community was a soon-to-be-coming McDonalds. We decided that our underlying secret of the town would be that the cows were actually modified dogs, and that only the people of high authority in our village knew this. (So MOOCH = MOO for cow + POOCH for dog). 

I thought that allowing the students to draw their own village was an excellent idea as it give the students the core element of 'possession' and 'authority' over their work. Hence, they will be more eager to and confident in speaking about their maps. In the primary classroom, it is common that when students are asked to present something that is not theirs, they feel as they are being tested and try to withdraw from speaking. 

I can definitely see myself adapting and using these activities with students in my class for all stages! Hopefully, in my upcoming professional experience I will be able to try them out. 

"Drama is life with the dull parts left out."-Alfred Hitchcock-