Zoe’s Blog of Joy

Drama and Social Education

This week we focused on using drama to explore bullying.
The first activity followed the bullying workshop proposed by Julie Porteus. Firstly, Jo asked us to find a space in the room and draw a picture of a bully. When we came back together as a group we shared our pictures. I drew an actual bully from my childhood, Jessica. I drew her towering over me, and me as this tiny stick figure underneath her. In the picture she had angry slanted eye brows and a mean smile. We looked at the common features of the bullies: sharp teeth, smiles, spiky hair, angry eye brows, etc, to see if there was a stereotype being portrayed. Some of the other people in the group had already considered this and had drawn their bullies as ordinary looking people and children. This would provide a good starting point for a discussion about how to identify a bully and how bullying is not just done by typically tough people.

Then we stood up and took turns in the circle to say something a bully would say. I think I said something like “Oh my god, did you get those clothes from an op-shop?” This activity helps students identify the different kinds of verbal bullying. We then got into pairs to show a tableaux of physical bullying, for example, bashing, pulling hair, grabbing by the collar. The next activity involved getting into groups and showing a scene involving extortion or exclusion. My group was all girls and we used the scenario of a school dance and a group of friends is going to buy new outfits, but one group member can’t afford to, and the others say she can’t go to the dance in the same outfit she wore last time so she may as well not go at all.

We then had to develop a scene that shows what causes the bully to become a bully. For example, a troubling home life, academic problems, abusive older siblings etc. My group showed a student who has really poor literacy skills and the students laugh at him because he can’t read, and this makes him retaliate and make himself bigger and tougher to make up for his inadequacies. This is a really good exercise because it enables students to empathise with the bully and understand that bullies aren’t just evil, there are motives and reasons for their behaviour, and ways that they can stop their bullying behaviour.

The last activity involved getting into pairs and showing the victim asking for help, in order to show students different ways that they can deal with bullying and that there are people who are willing to listen and understand. Finally we got into two groups and made up a bullying rap with messages for the bully and the victim.

We then used Heather Cahill’s “Defining Moments” as a model for a bullying workshop. I have actually done this exercise with Jo before in Drama Education.

The warm up in this workshop is a status exercise which involves all the students acting as toughs, timids and stars. First they walk arounds the room as a tough, developing the body language of the archetype, and then stop and talk to the nearest person, boasting about their latest tough deed. The exercise is repeated, but as a timid you ask for directions and as a star you boast about your latest movie.

We then got into two groups and created snapshots, or tableaux, of “The star hits town” and “Louts hang our on the local street”.

The next activity was an improvisation in pairs as the bully and the victim. Scenario one: the victim sits on a chair and the bully says “you know what I want, give it to me”. Scenario two: bully on chair, victim says “excuse me but you’re sitting on my chair”. It is interesting to analyse the body language of both characters. It is easy for the bully to have power over the victim when they are sitting down, but the bully is still able to have power by sitting openly and taking up heaps of space and the victim tries to make themselves invisible and as small as possible.

The next activity is called the human guinea pig. We didn’t get to try it in this class but I had done it in a previous class. The class gets into groups. One student from each group is sent out of room. Every time they come back in the group treats them in a different way – first they are blamed for something, then they are welcomed and included, then they are treated like a celebrity. The idea is to compare the way the guinea pig feels in reaction to each treatment and to consider why students might treat people in this way.

I think these activities are really good for exploring the idea of bullying, and of social skills and interaction in general. I am trying to put together some drama activities for teaching social skills, which I will be using for one of the assignments in this class.