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.