Nick’s all things uni drama blog

The book I was working on in class (or just reading) was automaton which was about a boy whose sister was sick and had to go and work in a factory that was making dolls (more like robots) that could walk and talk. It was Thomas Edison’s factory and the book was set in the 19th century and supposedly based on a true story; maybe not the boy’s experience but the failure of the dolls to be accepted by society. In the book every character seed to be like every other character, all the bosses looked the same and the workers all looked like the boy, this seemed to point towards the workers becoming like robots because they were doing repetitive work day in day out for pittance (they were building robot/dolls but actually were making themselves robots/dolls). It also brought up issues of oppression of working class (communism), completing all the work and having no ownership over it, also that they were the ones in need of more money and help but got none because of their status. This also raises issues of child labour and social welfare; is it right to send children into the workforce to support an otherwise poverty stricken family. I could even go so far to say that the non-acceptance of the dolls in the story reflected that people were not designed to work in such conditions.
I guess the key question for me is ‘is it right to take advantage of the working class and children that have no other options?’ Now how to make the drama meet this objective?
- still images of working at the doll factory
- scene showing how the little sister became sick
- what happened to the family after the doll factory was shut down
- two different teacher in roles, one of a struggling man who needs to support hsi sick wife so his son or daughter must work as well and one of a child worker who life is so bad because he has to work.
- Movement sound piece depicting what the doll sounded like and how it moved.
- paired impro’s between the boy and his sister or the boy and his mother or the boy and the boss with his silver teeth
- actually the conversation between the big boss with silver teeth and the boy on his first day, their meeting.
- students could show scenes of the dolls non-acceptance or acceptance when they got one (playing the rich children who didn’t have to work in the factories)
- a whole group protest against the factory, maybe because of the dolls or maybe against child labour
- students could write an obituary (I know that’s a bit morbid but when death is an issue grief is an emotion that should be stirred) for the little sister who dies
- students could write a letter of complaint to Thomas Edison about the dolls
- the students could stage a debate between factory owners and workers about whether it is right or wrong to employ children.
- Documentary style or report style drama on the lives of those involved in the dolls factory.
- moving sequence with sound showing a production line at the factory, one starts then next goes in and then next until all apart of it.
The more I think about it the more and more ideas that keep coming into my mind but I’ll leave it at that before I get really carried away. I think it could be added with research or documentation about medical facts of children working in factories and built towards a morale choice for them.

It seems from the reading that when Simons conducted this drama with three different groups similar ideas came back to her through her student’s reflections. The first group of Yr10 students reflected on how much the drama made them aware of their own and others ideas. Some of the second group (pre service teacher) also reflected on how the drama made them feel about their own ideas of life, death and religion. This not being Simon’s intention for this group rather it being to focus on the actual processes of the drama and the meta-cognition associated with that. The third group of in service teachers tended to reflect on how this technique of process drama would work with their own students and ended up developing and critiquing each other’s ideas of lesson they could run. These examples highlights Simons points from the beginning of the article that as a drama teacher you begin to develop skills of the craft of drama in education in which to identify learning opportunities within drama’s, how to empower students, look for potential metaphor and guard students against potential hazards created by the drama. I think this really Simons idea of teacher as artist and development of craft knowledge makes a whole lot of sense because like an actor who is continually developing, honing and polishing her craft a teacher is doing the same. Within drama we find these are the skills and craft that depict a good teacher from a mediocre one. I identify with her description at the start pf the article that beginning teacher hide behind the security and safety of rules and lesson plans, it is one thing I identify is the need to be more flexible. It is something I am consciously working on but no it takes time and experience to develop.
Thinking about Simons article the first thing that came to mind is that it struggled to get published because it could be seen as the bear committing suicide and that the first thing that some people said about the book in class is that the bear committed suicide. Working with her Yr 10s she asked them to think about the ending in another way apart from suicide and depict it anyway they chose. This is great because after we read the book in class I interrupted that the bear didn’t kill himself but instead escaped to bigger and brighter things. I think she made the right move because their is so much more in the book rather then when life is hopeless, just quit.

I think the possibility of using drama to introduce students to the world of a text are limitless but the two that I have been thinking of are ‘To kill a mockingbird’ and ‘1984′.
To kill a mockingbird is about the ignorance of racial segregation because of fear of difference. Setting up a historical or even timeless drama about prejudice would work equally well so that students can understand what it was like to live under racial bigotry in a divided state.
A drama could involve:
- splitting the class on eye or hair colour making one group sit at the back so they are disadvantaged when a reading is done
- frozen images of what students see difference, segregation and oppression are.

1984 on the other hand could be done setting up a series of dramas in which totalitarianism as the theme.

So we finished the learning the super warm up which was great and then jumped into having a look at Boal’s theatre of the oppressed. For the people that weren’t there, a vague description was given and we off to design a realistic short scene around sexual harassment that could be played over and over. The first group’s scene was a bunch of girl’s sexually harassing a teacher and then climaxed with the one student alone in the classroom with the teacher remaining. We did the first step in Boal’s theatre of the oppressed where audience members can give the actors their suggestions, we then proceeded onto the next step where spect-actors took the place of the actors and played out the scene. The class came to the conclusion that telling them its inappropriate was the way to go and then i was told to get up and have a go and everyone shot me down and said no no no that’s wrong; you screwed it up. Which when I think of it now reminds me of an example Boal talks about in (I think) ‘100 games for actors and non-actors’ where the situation involves a woman being treated like crap by a husband. A woman in the audience gives her solution but another man but in and says no that’s wrong and then she says ‘how could you possibly know what it likes to be in that position’. Boal then uses the example to talk about the strength of gender oppression and to see it actually taking place within the theatre of the oppressed itself. WE played the other two scenes but it was really just actually being able to try the theatrical style and not the content itself which was the important part. Theatre of the oppressed can be a great tool for empowering people and working through oppression with groups of people that have suffered. The difficulty is really finding a good scene which can be performed and changed. Having done this little bit makes me even more want to have ago using the unit of work i devised on it.

After theatre of the oppressed we moved onto briefly looking at what is literacy? We said that their is not just one literacy but multiple illiteracies and these multiple illiteracies involved understanding, using and evaluating anything that could be considered a text. Now a text is not just a written piece text, text on the other hand involved a whole range of things and so illiteracies themselves were diverse. We maintained that there were oral, visual, cultural, gestureal, spatial and critical. This conversation led us onto using children’s literature as a means for creating drama.

Jo introduced us to a game that was related to the book we were about to read which was about us ordering ourselves from the beginning of our first name a-z in a line, then second name and finally third name (not surname) if we had one. The book turned out to be about a boy with four names who was naive about what memories were and was trying to find out so he could give them to his elderly friend who was loosing her own. He got many suggestions was other people and went and found these things and when he gave them to his elderly friend they inspired her to remember many things. After we read the book we discussed the different approaches we could take using this book as stimuli for creating drama. Some ideas that went forward were making still images of her memories, playing out some of her memories, hot seta people that work at the nursing home and the list can really go on. Jo then gave us a hand out that contained how a source can be used to create drama. We were then asked to grab one of the other books that she had brought in read it and start devising some for that. My group ran out of time we only were able to read the book; which was called automaton and was about dehumanisation in the industrial world.

The final section of the class we looked at another approach of drama using literature as a source. This was aimed at using novels or plays which are pretty heavy going to just jump straight in and read. The idea is to investigate the world of the book first using drama. We then looked at a lesson devised by a heap of crew. It was about witches and how through jealousy and anger can lead to terrible things. The first step was discussing what ideas came to mind when we thought about witches and we could have made a list but limited time meant moving on quickly. Then we were told we were all archaeologists and had found a poem from the 16th century, we read the poem and discussed its meaning and who had written it and for what purposes. We then got a picture of these three women hanging and another with a trial and all these evil looking critters all about and were asked to discuss what was happening in the picture. Then Jo became a teacher in role as Bessie, she was a nice women who was known as a healer because she knew a lot about natural herbs and stuff. She helped us all with our aliments (it was funny when I said I had leprosy and Jo responded by saying i know when you have leprosy parts fall off then giving me two walnuts) and then we found out that she was recently widowed and had a boy named jimmy helping her on the farm. Bessie left and we found out some more info that the lairds (mayor) daughter was in love with jimmy but her father wouldn’t allow it and Bessie needed jimmy for help on the farm. We did a short role-play between Bessie and the daughter as the daughter wanted to meet jimmy. The lesson continues to a point where the laird says that Bessie has turned his daughter against him and any man caught helping Bessie will be punished. At the end of the lesson the students are asked to stand by either Bessie or the laird and are faced with the moral dilemma of do I support the laird and not be punished or do I support this good woman and sacrifice myself. The lesson could be used before starting to read the crucible because these are the themes that are present in this book.

Ok so yesterday we started the class by learning a really fantastic warm up game. I play a game similar to this with students in and out of drama but i think this one was much better. I think there were around about 8 or 9 layers to it. The game started with passing a current around a circle using a gesture, voice and eye contact. The gesture was like a clap pointing in the direction the energy was being passed with a ‘zip’ and making sure eye contact was made with the person that was receiving the energy (this is the case for all layers; eye contact with the person receiving the energy).
The second layer was to add a ‘boing’, throwing hands up in the air; this reversed the direction of the energy.
The third layer was to add a ‘bang’ (I think) making a hand gun thing with your hands and passing the energy to anyone in the circle.
The fourth layer was a ‘freak out’ in which everyone would throw their arms in the air run around a bit freaking out and then find a new place in the circle. The person who called the ‘freak out’ started energy back up again.
The fifth layer involved holding your arms out in an arc and saying ‘ooohhh’ and bringing both the volume and size of angle down. This is everyone so they are shoulder to shoulder in a small circle. The person who initiated starts the energy off again but everything is small.

The sixth layer is the inverse of the previous layer used to bring the circle from small back out to its normal size.
The seventh layer is clapping at someone and asking them a question, they don’t have to answer truthfully so what ever comes to mind.
The eighth layer was adding an emotion to the game so everyone had to play and act as if affected by this emotion.
That is the game as we played it but as many layers as possible could be added, one a lesson for however long you could add them or get students to think of ones and add that as well. The game was good because it certainly got me warmed up both physically and vocally and had me concentrating so I wasn’t to mess up the flow and keeps it going at a certain speed.

On Monday we started the class going over what the non-prac people did when we were away on prac. Basically they got together and devised a lesson based around journalism using a process/teacher in role approach which sounded really cool. We are going to be doing this soon when they go away on prac but we will be looking at inventions which has so many possibilities and before I go rabbiting on about anything I guess I better wait till I learn more.

So besides getting the run down of what they non-pracies did we were talking about Adults and drama/theatre in education. Basically we discussed when we had seen theatre that had left an impression, the problems a teacher may encounter when teaching adults, situations where drama is used for adults and theatre designed specifically to educate. We also watched a video from the IDEA conference that took place in Brisbane during the 90s as well as talking about Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the oppressed. I just realised the weeks questions are pretty much about what we talked about so I guess I’ll answer them and fed in any info from the class that is important and then looking further at the sheet that is exactly what it says to do (idiot).

What times can I think of when theatre has left an impression on me, what way did it impress me and did it alter my thinking about a topic or idea? The first play that comes to mind is hoods which I saw at the Drama Vic conference. The play was absolutely incredible about 3 children left in a car by their mother who was picked up by the cops for stealing. The show was great in the way that the two actors used loads of theatrical techniques to tell this story which slipped in and out of fantasy but left the audience with the cold and stark reality that some children face. It made me feel sad and angry because it made me think about domestic violence and abuse and how that affects so many young people. I’m not sure about the pieces intention but i felt it surely pointed towards a lack of support and misdirected blame that victims of abuse and their families must have to go through. This play was spoken about briefly but another that i hadn’t seen was called ’stole’ which was about the stolen generation and a few of the people said that it had really developed their interest in finding out more about the stolen generation.

Can I think of any examples of theatre specifically designed to educate or influence adults? I can’t really think of any but if I do I’ll come back to this and have a stab. Actually is this like Theatre of the Oppressed because this was developed by Boal to hopefully help people deal with and be educated about how they are oppressed. Maybe I’m reading too deep into it.

What examples can I think of where drama is used to educate or train? We didn’t really come up with much for this in class but after reading O’Tooles article my brain clicked on and I really start thinking about how much it is really used. The stuff we came up in class with was when training for first aid and CPR type of medical things, role play situations when preparing for sales situations and team building exercises using drama games. I was thinking about the medical bit and I’m sure I’ve heard of training nurses and doctors using puppet/robot hybrids to practise certain techniques, operations or procedures on which is certainly drama (playing doctors). I was then thinking about the police, armed forces, fire-fighters who run drills and action games that are supposed to simulate real life crisis situations again drama. I was watching on 60minutes last year how the battalion or whatever that was going over to Afghanistan was being trained by the special ops over there playing out scenarios that they had encountered during there time over there. I think the playing the scenario can be taken back a step further to anyone who has every participated in a fire drill has used drama for training because it is a what if question being played out as if it were real. I’m sure there are lots more situations where drama is used that I’m not thinking about.

What factors inhibit the use of drama as pedagogy for adults? In class we really thought that drama probably couldn’t be used was an effective educational tool with adults because it is in the realm for children and playing but this is as O’Toole says in his article just because a lot of adults have their own preconceived idea of what drama is and means when in fact it is far broader then they understand. We also thought that certain adults may find participating in drama as silly and pointless because it is in the realm of fun, its not serious, its not what education or training is about. O’Toole also comments on this explaining that adult education is often professionally and industrial driven putting it in the cognitive realm of comprehension skills and technical knowledge, not like the humanist approach taken with children in education. We also spoke about some Adults possibly believing the way they know they learn is the best way and not prepared to take any steps outside of their own perceptions of what education is and how it should be presented.

Just have to Google what ameliorating and palatable means but now that is done; are there any ways of making these above factors better to make drama more acceptable for adult learners? I guess to make drama more acceptable for adult learners it first requires education about what drama is and how often they probably engage in drama activity without even knowing or thinking about it. This can be followed up by showing them the purpose of the activities and what it aims to achieve in using drama. The other thing would be to give the students options about what they wanted to do and how this could be achieved and finally just engaging in good teaching practices.

Further ways that drama may be used or applied in the teaching of adults? One thing which was brought up in class and also my EXE401 class was using drama students (uni) to help education students teach in a mock classroom set up so they can try varies behaviour management strategies or something. Drama could also be used in crisis situations to help people deal with what has happened to them using theatre/drama as a tool for therapy which could pose problems but on the other hand could really help people deal with the issues they need help with. I’m not sure if rainbow of desire deals with this at all but O’Toole was talking about it, something I’ll have to have a look into.

Any reference to the O’Tooles article is referenced O’Toole, John (2000) Adults, earning and Drama. In J. O’Toole and M. Lepp (Eds) Drama for Life: Stories of Adult Learning and Empowerment. Brisbane Australia

Just before I finish I will write a bit about Boal, We looked briefly at Boal and his Theatre of the Oppressed which I have looked at quite a bit and find incredibly interesting. I developed a unit for work on it last semester which I haven’t yet had the opportunity to try out but am hoping to do so next semester. I really like this type of theatre because it really opens up the problems people may be facing into a forum that allows them to discover ways in dealing with this oppression that won’t end in further oppression for them or others and that isn’t just magic. I use Boal’s Games for actors and non-actors quite a lot for warm ups.

So the first week back from teaching rounds and time to recap some serious drama for learning across the curriculum. After 6 long weeks of not be able to (or not knowing how to) find the drama for learning across the curriculum folder on DSO but now i have found it and read the assessment I’m unsure if I should continue using the integration approach I used in week 2 discussing what happened and then answering the questions in one, I guess I’ll just see how I go.

We began Monday’s workshop with a bit of a debriefing of how the teaching rounds went for those who had them and it seemed everyone had reasonably good things to say. The other’s who remained at uni were going to tell us how they went each week out at sa school but we ran out of time and didn’t get to find out so i guess this will be when we return after break. So after this we were asked to move the chairs and stuff back grab a piece of paper and draw a bully (still having trouble uploading pictures will be chasing it up over the break) in which we all came back together and looked at each and discussed the features we saw. The idea of this exercise is to understand if students had a stereotypical impression of bullies, if this was the case a discussion could be had to describe how some other bullies look. My bully had sharp teeth, a menacing roar and Jo commented that it appeared that maybe the bullies bark is worse then their bite.

The next exercise we undertook involved the group standing in the circle and saying something that a bully would say with the option of a gesture as well. I found this strikingly familiar because a group of year ten’s i taught worked on some stuff about cyber bullying and the year 11s were working on developing material for the school show ‘out of sync’ which is sort of about bullying but not really. The thing that people said in the group was stuff that these students also said during workshops. It shows that bullying does carry with it some really strong stereotypes. Anyway this activity allows students to share things they may have been bullied with but also to possibly help them identify what bullying sounds like so they can maybe step in another time.

The third exercise we undertook involved getting in partners and making a single tableau image of some physical bullying. Most of the images were physically bullying through indirect means such as standing over, glaring etc. My partner and I decided to the very physical contact with one on the ground and the other laying the boot in. We did receive a comment about boys being really physical but I reckon if this workshop was run with student’s year eight or below they would more generally show the real physical bullying through contact. This much like the previous exercise can let students see what forms physical bullying can take and if no indirect physical bullying was not shown this could be another step in the process to show what physical bullying can look like in all forms.

We formed up into groups of three after this and had to make a short scene about either extortion or exclusion and I’m pretty sure it worked out that there were 4 groups two doing each of them. Some really good scenes came out of this; I’m just struggling to remember what they were right now. My groups were about a boy and a girl who extorted money of a girl because we were going to make up lies about her so that the boy she liked would hate her. Anyways probably not that important more to the point this exercise that allows students to grasp the idea that bullying can go much further then verbal or physical when people manipulate and exclude to get what they want, being a much more indirect from of bullying.

We then made small role plays about an incident which happened to a bully in there life which had turned them into a bully. My group went with the eBay wielding junky mother who sold everything the father gave to the child to buy drugs. It was a little bit confusing but when the story came out i think everyone got the picture, we also saw a girl who thought she was better then she was and therefore bullied those around her to make herself feel better and parents neglecting the child. This exercise allows the students to feel empathy for the bully and see that bullies are not always bad people doing it for pleasure they are probably even more messed up then their victims in certain cases. It also allows anyone in the class who is a victim of bullying to feel slightly empowered to see a bully (what’s the opposite of empower??) powerless, that my guess anyway.

We had a discussion about the types of people victims of bullying can turn to discuss the problems they are encountering. Our group spoke about a couple of systems such as buddying, restorative justice, student assistant systems. All of these were good but they defiantly al contain flaws. We then got into pairs and started improvising a discussion between a victim of bullying and someone they have turned to. In mine i was talking to two older sisters about being payed out at school and there was a variety of different ideas that came out of this. This exercise I guess lets student experiment with how they could approach a third party about their bullying problem and the kind of things they could say which would be an extremely helpful stepping stone for a student who needs to take that step.

So the group briefly spoke about the bullies in fairy tales and the exercise which could be done to recreate a scene from one of said fairy tales but to make the bullying character out of control crazy bully of the century which is a more light hearted way of looking at bullies. WE brushed over this very quickly and then moved onto creating a bully rap about the stuff that was covered in the class. The group I as in we were shocking but the other group really pulled something together and it sounded really great. This is a nice alternate way to perform information about bullying. Jo also said to check out on YouTube a video about bullying which I just punched some stuff in and watched a few which were hilarious to say the least.
http://www.youtube.com

That was the first half of the session or 2/3rds of the session which was all taken from a workshop designed for grades 3-6 which could be used as a stand alone workshop or the stimulus for play building about bullying. I will be uploading it once i figure out how to do that.

So anyway it’s been about a week since I was writing this first section because Easter weekend got real deep but here to finish it off now. So anyway we had come back from break and we started looking at a unit of work called ‘Defining Moments’ which is a seven session look at bullying and dramatic skills. You can find it on the mind matters website or here is a link (I think) http://cms.curriculum.edu.au/mindmatters/resources/resources.htm

Anyway we ran the first session really quickly skipping over things a bit more quickly due to the time we had in class. We started the session with a warm up walking around the space and taking on the characterisation of toughs, timid and stars. As we walked around the space we would then engage in a little conversation as that archetype. We discussed about the physicalisation of each of the archetypes about how they held themselves (gait), walked, gestures, talked and others. Jo then related this to status work and the dramatic skills that could also be discussed. After this we separated into two group and had to make a snap shot, one group was ‘movie star hits town’ and ‘louts hang out on Local Street’. I didn’t realise it was a frozen image and started acting during my groups then to realise it was meant to be frozen, ahahah. These images also brought up discussion about dramatic skills because using the snap shot you can discuss the use of space, focus and gesture and how successful it is at developing the visual image.

The next exercise we got into pairs and played a little improvisation game in which one person was a bully and the other the victim. The first impro began with the bully standing and the victim sitting, a frozen image was then brought to life with the bully saying you know what i want now give it to me; this began the impro. We looked breifely at on of the pairs and then move onto the second impro started with a frozen image of bully in the seat and the victim standing, the impro began with the victim saying excuse me that is my chair and then continued on. We again looked at one of the pairs but if we had time we could have looked at more of them. This exercise opens a whole heap of food for discussion because there is immediately the personification of the bully and victim, how did each of them use their body, voice, language and positioning. The change in power of the bully from standing to sitting is another great thing to be discussed because how did the bully alter his/her body, movement to compensate not having the dominant power of standing.

We ran out of time and so didn’t get a chance to have ago at the third scenario which is the human guinea pig, where one member of a group is sent away when they come back the group treats them in a particular way, ignored, blamed, welcomed and then treated like a movie star. This session is one out of seven and is more sophisticated then the one we ran through in the first half of the class aimed more towards secondary students. I have ran this lesson before with two different year eight groups and they both responded extremely well to it, especially the human guinea pig exercise. They absolutely loved that and it generated so much discussion about what it was like. I tweaked the exercise though so that each group had four members and each member got a chance to be the guinea pig which i don’t think altered the outcomes because the students spoke easily about how their experience was different to each other. I am defiantly keen to try this unit of work out at some stage in the future because it addresses bullying and works specifically on dramatic skills and getting students to identify how and when these skills are used.

I had a look at the responsibility website and started looking for resources related to social awareness and transformation but I haven’t found much except for papers.