Children who take part in drama lessons have been known to show highly developed social skills (Gibson & Ewing, 2011, p.8). Exploratory play in their early lives allows students to improve their self confidence in exploring other art forms (Gibson & Ewing, 2011, p.10).
Pretext
A pretext can be in the form of a written text, oral stories, maps, diagrams, pictures, television news clips, sections from a news paper, pieces of music, three dimensional objects etc and will provide ample opportunity to explore an imaginary world filled with characters, contexts and situations (Ewing &Simons, 2004, p.64).
Today’s drama class started with a warm up activity that makes you leave the logical thoughts behind and free up the imaginative process before starting the reading of pretext. We got to see the concept of improvisation, offer, block and acceptance of gift in practice and explore it in a collaborative setting. We had to team up with another person to enact the concept of ‘offering’ gifts and respond with an ‘acceptance’ of the gift. We explored three ways of doing this using oral English, gibberish and mime. First we had to say to a partner, “Hello! I have a present for you” with accompanying actions and the recipient of the offer went like “Thank you for the .......”, which also was complimented with accompanying actions. We had to fill in the blank space with the name of whatever we thought was being offered and the entire thing had to be done pleasantly. The same action was repeated, second time using gibberish and exaggerated actions and expressions and the third time with mime. I found the mime easier to do than the gibberish (Although a colleague suggested doing the gibberish using one sound- a concept I found really useful to increase my comfort level with gibberish). Even though our tutor Victoria said that there were no right or wrong answers, during the verbal transactions I was afraid of coming out with something idiotic, which is pretty much what I feel with almost all of my interactions in the drama transactions. But at the same time it is nice doing something way out of my comfort level.
Reading a pretext- Green children.
What do you know from reading it?
What questions are beginning to form?
A group list of questions
How did you get here? Do you know how to get back? Where have you come from? What colour are the village people? Where does the cave lead to? How do the normal people make a living? Have the village people come into contact with green children before? Do any of the village people live near the mountains?
Mapping of ‘Pearl Bay’
Based on the information gathered (from reading and imagination) we had to design a country town in which the green children were found and we came up with a small fishing town of 800 people called “Pearl Bay” and created the map of the town. By mapping the geographical and economic aspects of the town, the participants gain in depth understanding of the community and its members, building belief and perspective about the setting and characters.
Creating a frozen moment (Still image)
Think of a person from the village; try to think of the way he/she would react to the discovery of green children. We came up with a witch in the cave who was trying to get to the children who had escaped from the cave. They were discovered by a romantic couple on the weekend. Paticipants can be tapped in to reveal their thoughts. Students can come up with a caption for the news paper,(Eg. “Evil witch ruins the romantic weekend”. It runs on like this…”.Chad and Mary smith were exploring the …..”. Think about the levels, positioning of people in the tableau etc.
Role walks of villagers
Plot the different kind of people that could live in a village (shop keepers, police, teacher, tourists, grave digger, medicine people, postman, gossipers etc.)
Walk around and gossip with the people you meet. While walking around we imagine ourselves to be a member or visitor of the town and rationalise our presence and relationship with the town and its people to build up our characters. During this exercise we had to understand and build up the stories of our characters with various partners by exchanging gossip about the people we had met, their activities and happenings regarding the green children, thus adding on to our knowledge of the dynamics about the occupants of the town. By doing these we are making sure that students are able to picture the village clearly in their mind within the drama event frameset they are given.
Hot seat
Students in the hot seat are invited to answer the questions from the audience (both the audience and the students in the hot seat are answering questions in their respective roles. For eg, one person in the hot seat was a police chief from the village, another was a grave digger named Karl). This exercise builds the authenticity of the roles and stories within the dramatic context (who, when, where, what).By stepping into a role or ideas you can start to see things from another’s perspective which is one of the central aspects of drama( Gibson & Ewing, 2011, p. 52).
Still image
We also had to pose ourselves in relation to the death of the green skinned boy in a manner that revealed our feeling for the event. It was interesting to see that most of the town people who expressed regret or sympathy with the death of the green child were children or people new to the town. The majority of the old occupants of the town mostly rejected the presence of the green children and few were even openly antagonistic. This activity is a great way to get the students to explore their own perceptions and perspectives. It was interesting to see the stories and perspectives revealed by the characters of the town which made you dig deeper into your own perceptions.
Ideas for teaching children
Choose a picture book, provide a gap in the story to play with imagination. Using the activities detailed above students can be guided to explore the setting, characters etc. This can lead to Literacy activities like writing articles, stories etc.
Drama devices-Still images and tapping in- can give opportunities for the children to play around, indulge in curiosity again exploring thought processes, perceptions and perspectives.
Explore relationships (Couple at home, outside)-body language, leadership etc.
References
Ewing, R. & Simons, J.(2004). Beyond the Script-drama in the class room.PETA:Newtown,Australia.
Gibson, R., & Ewing, R. (2011). Transforming the curriculum through the arts. Palgrave MacMillan: Melbourne
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