There were some really fantastic lessons presented over the two presentation weeks. I have left this rather late to reflect and I can barely remember them but I’m going to give it a go…

There were two presentations on the Stolen Generation. One of the presenters did not want students to see the film “Rabbit Proof Fence” before starting their work on the subject and one presenter made it a focus of the unit, so they had a very different approach. I really enjoyed listening to the Archie Roach song in Darcie’s presentation. The song alone could be pulled apart and explored for different themes and ideas.

Jess had created a really interesting drama lesson on “difference” using “The Lost Thing” as a focus. I liked the way she kept drawing the lessons back to the text, slowly revealing more about the story and the “thing”. I recall creating scenes where we play the main character in the text, bringing the lost thing home, and showing the reaction of the parents. I really liked Jesse’s lessons and I’d love to use them somewhere – maybe in my own lessons with my youth at risk.

We also had lessons on drug education and sex education. The sex education lesson was focused on contraception. When Suzie first introduced the idea I wasn’t sure how she was going to present the lesson in a drama format, and I got pictures in my head of the kinds of “role play” we would be doing, but she tackled the topic really well with brainstorms, writing in role and other such things which I often forget to use in my own drama planning.

There were two lessons for the SOSE classroom, one on war, and one on Caroline Chisolm. Because these were topics I don’t know anything about, I had a little trouble following (or maybe just remembering?) the presentations. I know that they put heaps of work and preparation into these lessons and I reckon without actually taking the lesson its hard to convey it all in a 15 minute talk.

There was also a presentation for pre-school that was centred around a children’s book, Dr Dog. This was a really fun lesson to be a part of, and sort of made me wish I were going to be a pre-school teacher with delightful little darlings to teach instead of little teenage bastards who don’t give a shit (yeah, I know, they are not all like that, some teenagers are darlings too). It took me back to my kindergarten days, where I often spent time trying on doctors and nurses outfits and equipment and dreamed of one day becoming a doctor.

The other two lessons that I can remember were on bullying and religion. As for the SOSE classes, I did not really follow the RE class because I did not know anything about it, but I thought drama would be a really good way into heavy subjects like persecution and heavy texts like the bible. The bullying lesson was really well thought out and prepared. I liked the presentation which showed bullies on TV and in movies, and the flash cards were very flash! It’s great that she will be able to teach this on her rounds, I think it will go down really well and the kids will actually enjoy it and not feel like they are being patronized or lectured, which is really important.

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.

Jo introduced us to the idea that children learn through imaginative play. In groups, we discussed the age at which we think play stops, and also what kinds of imaginative play we engaged in as children.
Nick and Darcy were in my group, and interestingly, Nick’s were a bit different to mine and Darcy’s because they were more masculine, involving fighting and war and such things. I can remember playing shops (which Darcy had also done) and with dolls (I had this collection of Sylvanian families – little bears and rabbits, with tiny pieces of furniture and tiny tea sets, and tiny clothes, I loved collecting them), and also my brother and I used to draw lines on the footpath in chalk and ride our bikes on them as though they were roads and we were in cars. We would have petrol stations and shops that we would go to, and we would pay for things with leaves. My brother is seven years older than me, so I often engaged in games that were a lot more sophisticated and had more rules than the games I could have invented on my own.

Jo said that Peter Slade, who has written about imaginative play, says that children become serious and stop engaging in play (in front of adults) at about age seven. Considering that my brother was seven when I was born, this means that my brother was much older than seven when he became serious and stopped playing, I remember him playing leggo well into his teens…and walky talkies (anyone remember those?) in his twenties…he did mature rather late. I remember the turning point for me was on my 10^th birthday my dad offered to buy me a dolls house (which I had wanted for so long because I didn’t have a house for my Sylvanian family) or roller skates – and I decided on the roller skates which were cooler and more practical.

We engaged in a whole group “play” where we were all working in a fertilizer company called “fertifree”. We assumed roles as different people working in the factory – cleaners, production workers, maintenance guys etc. Inevitably some conflict arose out of the role play in terms of staff hierarchies and stuff. Then Jo convened us all in the role of the human resources manager (or something like that) to tell us that we were getting some kind of a bonus scheme because the company was doing so well, (which meant nothing to many of us as, such as myself, because we were just daft production workers). She also told us about a leak that was apparently not a problem (which was obviously to plant a seed of conflict).

The next “teacher in role” that Jo assumed was that of a muscle farmer who was concerned that there was some pollution going into the ocean and that it might effect her muscle farm. This caused some gossip and unrest in the workplace. Lost of people were being blamed and the underdogs thought they may loose their jobs. When the muscle farmer came back for another meeting we discovered that whatever was going into the ocean was actually making her muscles grow faster and better than ever.

I’m not sure we really came to any solution in the drama but it threw up a lot of ethical dilemmas and got everyone really involved in trying to solve the issue because their character had a stake in whatever the outcome. This would be different to just discussing the issue not in role. I believe if you just proposed the issue and had them debate it students would not be able to get as many different perspectives, to invest themselves in it or to get passionate about the topic.

This week we ran our Inventions lesson with the grade three students at Essex heights. When we arrived, we realized that we were not going to be using the large space like we thought, but were placed in a really tiny room that was almost impossible to do drama in. Nonetheless, we seemed to pull the lesson off ok…

The first warm up went pretty well. The kids really got into the “groups and numbers” thing because I guess the game is very similar to the kinds of games they like to play themselves in the play ground. They came up with some very effective machines – I particularly liked the way one group used movement to imitate a washing machine.

The “machines” warm up was something they weren’t so familiar with. The first group did very boring, samish movements that didn’t build onto one-another (although you often get this from older, experienced students anyway…). For the second group, a few of us got up and modeled the game and then we saw an improvement in this group.

When we started the drama, Jo took them into the drama by pretending that they were actually going to the conference (e.g. in the lift, down the corridor, through the door). One of the students resisted this and said “but we haven’t gone anywhere”. Jo said, in our discussion afterward, that some participants feel the need to show that they are not stupid and that they know the drama is not real, that they are not conned. Jo told us about a role play she did with some students which involved her cooking some sausages and offering one to a person who then said “there isn’t a sausage there you know” and Jo replied “Yeah, I know” and he was then okay about it. He wanted to make sure that Jo knew that he wasn’t fooled.

When we did the teacher in role we ended up talking to the students a bit more than we had planned because they had so many questions and were so excited. I really wanted to answer all of their questions so I went on a bit and Jo had to stop me, which was a bit embarrassing.

As the previous conference exercise went on a bit, the students didn’t have time to do name badges so they just went straight into inventing. I think that even though the name badges didn’t seem important it would have been really good because it would have made the students take on the “expert” role and this would have enhanced the drama aspect.

The kids came up with some really fantastic inventions, for example sun-powered teleporter, and a hover craft, and an odd flying, floating, parachute thing. Many of the students had considered their inventions in great depth and they had worked really well in their groups. I’m not sure that they would have come up with such interesting ideas or worked so effectively had it not been for the context of learning through drama. If we had have just given them some information, for example, on handouts, and then asked them to make inventions, I think it would have taken them ages to get to work and they wouldn’t have had as much pride in their work.

This week followed on from the previous week in terms of planning for our Essex Heights Learning through Drama Inventions lesson. We started off by revisiting our brainstorm. We thought about what roles could be played in the drama, and centred the roles around the “mantle of the expert” idea which would see the children playing the roles of engineers, designers, scientists, government officials, and consumers.

We kept ideas open at the first, allowing everyone to come up with something. I proposed the idea that the students would have to invent something to get themselves out of a situation. But that didn’t go anywhere…we thought that we needed to focus on a particular type of invention. Toys? Robots? Darcy thought of a game she plays with students in which students pretend they are things at a museum, and one person cleans the museum objects and they try to touch her without getting caught. We thought we could apply this to a toy shop. But these ideas very quickly went out the window because they seemed too obvious and generic and wouldn’t be juicy enough. We ended up deciding on having the students invent a new mode of transport. We thought that there could be a Da vinci conference (based on the idea that Leonardo Da Vinci invented things hundreds of years before they were made) with teachers in role as government officials and students “enrolled” as engineers, scientists, designers. We thought they could make up a name for themselves as though they are playing a character. Jess had the idea of having them presenting their inventions at a science fair, an idea she got from a movie. We all decided that as warm up games we could play “machines” and “groups and numbers” (where students must make inventions and machines using movement in groups). So, these ideas pretty much make up our lesson plan, which Jo is going to write up and bring next week so we can look over it before we take the lesson. I am going to be playing the environment minister at the Da Vinci conference. This involves briefing the students on the transport they must invent from the perspective of protecting the environment.  

This week we used the Morgan and Saxton article in the reader, “Dramathink” to plan drama activities based on a theme or topic. Jo had planned a unit of drama on the theme of immigration.
Firstly she brought in a basket of stuff that was related to the theme of immigration, and asked us to think of other objects that could be put in the basket. We thought passports, birth certificates from a different country of birth, cultural artefacts, photo albums and such things would be good stimuli. We looked at how a single object can tell a story and contain meaning and significance. Jo gave the example of a red suitcase which is kept at a museum. The story that goes that a woman immigrating to Australia came to out shores with nothing but the clothes she was wearing, and she didn’t want to appear as though she had nothing so she bought a red suitcase with the very little money she had, but she had nothing to put in it so she and carried the empty case around with her.

Jo told us about the immigration museum in Melbourne, where there is a permanent exhibition called the Journeys Gallery, which features a replica ship where visitors can experience the changes in sea travel first hand from the 1840s to 1950s.
Jo showed us a picture of London in the 1800’s which showed life on the streets. Jo took on a teacher in role as one of the women in the picture who is shown in front of an inn and holding a baby. In role, she explained her situation in England and the difficulties she was facing. She then pulled out a flyer which was advertising opportunities to go to Australia and work. She explained that she could not read and had the class read and explain it to her.
Jo then led us through an activity called thought or conscious tunnel, which is used when there is a choice or conflict and gives the students an opportunity to voice the thoughts of the character in relation to this choice. In this case the choice was whether to stay in London or take the opportunity to go to Australia.
The next activity involved getting into pairs with one student playing the role of the woman in the picture and the other playing her husband. The role shows what the characters would talk about in regards to this opportunity.
Next, the students create roles (name, age, why immigrating etc) and the teacher assumes the role of the port official choosing people to go on the boat to Australia, by assessing their health, strength and courage.
Other activities which Jo suggested, but which we did not do due to time restrictions, would be to write letters home from the new country, to make a captains log, and to compare life in Australia with that in the old country (Jo showed us a picture of Melbourne which illustrated this).

At the end of this week’s lesson, we started planning our inventions lesson which we will be taking to Essex Heights Primary School in a few weeks. We used the “thematic networking” approach which is suggested in the “dramathink” reading by mapping out a brainstorm on the broad topic of Inventions.

My dramathinking…

Inspired by Jo’s immigration lessons, I couldn’t help thinking about a possible text which I’d love to teach in English, which is the mini-series “Marking Time” by John Doyle, which is essentially a love story about a young man, Hal, who falls in love with Randa, a young Afghani asylum seeker. It is set in a small country town during the Sydney Olympics and the Centenary of Federation and the September 11 attacks on the world trade centre form a backdrop to the story. I think drama could be used to explore broad questions about the film such as: why do people seek Asylum in Australia? How were different Australian communities effected by the bombing of the world trade centre?

I was thinking that the “Time before, after and within” model of taking the source apart which is suggested in the “dramathink” reading would be useful here.
For “time before”, you could look at Asylum seekers in their home country, what is happening to make them leave. Using the “A-Z of drama conventions and techniques” reading (by J Neelands) I thought that activities that could be used to explore this would be creating a tableau or a news report of the events happening in the country.
For “time after” you could get explore how Asylum seekers either get accepted as being legitimate refugees or are sent back home. Students could develop scenes in which they show the asylum seekers having their refugee status approved or being granted permanent residency, or being rejected because they haven’t provided the right documents. You could get students into groups and they are given a letter and the group improvises their response to this letter.
For “time within” you could look at Asylum seekers who are living in Australian communities, like the family in the movie. You could explore the racism that is shown towards Muslim or Afghani people in communities and workplaces in reaction to the bombing of the world trade centre. You could use gossip circles to show what is happening in the community, and get them to assume different roles in the mini-series (e.g. a racist young person, someone who attacks the shop, Randa’s father etc) and hot seat them to explore different motives, beliefs etc.

Other activities could include the conscious alley just like the activity Jo ran in class (Asylum seeker deciding whether to go to Australia, also on other choices in film: the main character on whether he should act on feelings towards Randa, the father on how he should react to knowledge of relationship). You could also do a teacher in role as an asylum seeker in order to introduce the students to some of the issues faced by refugees. You could then have students create a character than explains why he or she is seeking asylum, perhaps is applying for a visa to the government. You could also use this, and the film, for a SOSE class.

Question 1: Can you think of a time when theatre you have seen has left an impression on you? In what way did it impress you? Did it make you think or feel differently about a topic or idea?

I really don’t see enough theatre – I don’t live near the city and stuff that makes it to this end of the woods tends to be not worth seeing. Occasionally there is something good though. I saw a piece of theatre called “Me and My Friend” at the Dandenong Ranges Community Cultural Centre for a literature class in Year 10. It was one of my first experiences of adult theatre I suppose (as opposed to the theatre made for children). I don’t even remember much about it, but (with the help of a friend with a better memory than mine who saw it with me) it was about a group of mentally disabled people who, due to changes in government, were forced out of care and into shared living environments. Apparently it was written in England in Thatcher years when many of the mental hospitals were closed down. The issues delt with were pretty heavy I suppose, and it was delt with in a really nice way, but it was the space that got me. The performance space was really small and intimate, and that was so different from my experiences of theatre, and I guess I didn’t think theatre could be done that way. It gave a real closeness and claustrophobia to the piece, like we were part of the action on stage, not just an inactive audience. I guess I like the way art can do that to adults – the way the form can really challenge their expectations and assumptions about what art is and what it is capable of.

An aside…it’s interesting because that Arts and Cultural Centre I mentioned just recently hosted an exhibition called “Blasphemy” (which my fiancé was a part of) which looked at these issues (challenging audiences, the role of the artist etc) AND I just found out that the play I saw in year 10 was performed by the same company that has the youth theatre group that I lead! Weird how things are so connected…

Question 2: Can you think of any examples of theatre specifically designed to educate/ influence adults?

I think, in a sense, all theatre (if it’s done well), seeks in some way to educate and influence adults. They contain morals, values, and messages for the audience. Is that a cop out to the question?

Question 3: What examples can you think of where drama is used to educate/train adults?

Last year I observed a young woman who was conducting classes for adults with mental illness. The participants had become disengaged from society due to their experiences and the sessions were aimed at integrating them back into the community. For these people, some simple everyday activities can be challenging, and the role play activities help them experience those events in a safe and supportive environment. The sessions were also aimed at developing confidence and making them feel good about themselves and the world around them.

Question 4: What are the factors that inhibit the use of drama as pedagogy for adults?

As adults, we learn to see the world rationally, realistically, and not to loose ourselves in imagination and play. I recently babysat my 5 year old nephew, and he had me playing with transformers, and making wands out of leggo, not stepping on cracks in concrete – his whole world was filled with the imagined, the unreal, and I had so much trouble entering that world. I couldn’t deny the reality, and I was embarrassed, even when no-one was looking. I was self-regulating myself to believe that there was something wrong with pretending. So if it is hard for me, who is involved in drama and role play on a regular basis, it must be even harder for those with no experience with drama.

Question 5: Are there any ways of ameliorating these factors to make drama more palatable for adult learners?

I think I can get involved in drama and play because there is a focus, a serious goal, I’m not pretending just for fun (although it is rather fun). We need to keep adult learners focused on the outcome so that they can loose themselves in the drama.

Question 6: Suggest some further ways that drama may be used or applied in the teaching of adults.

Drama is used in the workplace to role play scenarios, for example, issues with customers, issues between workers etc. I have also heard of employers sending their workers on “group bonding” type workshops that help develop team skills and such.

At the beginning of the lesson, students who are in Jo’s other drama education class taught us a variation of the Zip, Boing, Pow game. In addition to these three actions (zip to the left, boing back in the other direction and Pow across the circle), we also added “Freak Out” where everyone freaks out and then finds another place in the circle - and then the Zipper continues the zip. Also we added an action which (physically and vocally) makes the circle smaller and then we continue the game quietly and in small movements - and then the circle can be made larger again by reversing the action and sound. The next action, is to ask a question instead of powing and the person must answer quickly (not necessarily truthfully e.g. Q- where do you live - A - Mars). The next is to play the game with a certain emotion (e.g. happy, sad, anxious, in love etc).

I had the opportunity to play this game with my youth theatre group and it was excellent. Usually I find variations of this game (Zip, Zap, Boing/Zip, Zap, Bang) can get confusing and students don’t pick it up. I think by challenging them in this way (and I didn’t make anyone go out to keep it going) they really took it on and made it work. I managed to get up to the level of making the circle smaller and larger, which I thought was a good achievement for a group of 13-16 year olds. I’m looking forward to playing it again and building it up - maybe getting them to make suggestions, so they sort of own the game and become experts at it.

Forum Theatre

Before starting our new topic, we finished our work with Forum Theatre. We broke into groups and set about developing a scene around the issue of sexual harassment. I was in a group of four girls (including myself). We threw up a few different ideas, but we decided on something we thought would be realistic but not typical. Our scenario involved a group of girls sexually harassing their young male teacher. We wondered at first if this would be considered sexual harassment, but we realised that if the genders were reversed – a group of guys harassing a female teacher – it would be considered sexual harassment, so the same rules should apply to male teachers.

Jo decided to use our scene as a starting point for doing a forum theatre exercise. Various other students made suggestions to the Protagonist – the teacher –about how to stop this example of oppression from happening. When one of the other students stepped into the role of the protagonist (sorry, I’ve forgotten her name), the dynamics really changed. She was strong, and her tactics were good. In order to stay true to the role, I could not continue with the harassment, for fear that there would be consequences, or shame. It was an interesting and unexpected result. I’d really love to use this in drama, and perhaps in English. You could look at issues in the media this way, or issues and conflicts in fiction texts.

Drama and Multi-literacies
Drama and Literature

Next in the lesson, we looked at Children’s story books as a way of exploring drama.
Jo read us a story about a boy whose elderly friend is loosing her memory. One of the possible drama activities we thought you could do in response to the book could be to explore emotional memory (using objects like those from the book to do tell stories).

Jo brought in a few other childrens books. One was about Eddison’s dolls (I can’t remember the name – Animatron, or something robotic-like). It follows the story of a boy who is working in the factory in which Eddison’s speaking and walking dolls are being made. It explores issues such as industrialization, and the dehumanizing effects of the production line, and the Frankenstein-ish desire to play God. It is an interesting, dark, disturbing book – kind of Dickensian. You could do some interesting movement stuff (machines/sameness) or look at how you create mood in theatre, and also explore the issues and themes through role play.

As a group, we looked at “The Great Bear”, which is about a dancing bear in a circus. It is almost a dreamtime narrative, as it shows the bear escaping from stone-throwing and taunting peasants by going up into the sky and becoming “The Bear” constellation. I was interested in the potential for exploring drama through “The Great Bear”. The story ends by showing visually, rather than telling through words, what happens to the great bear. I think you could explore, through the text, the use of silence in theatre, and non-naturalism. And, linking with Jennifer Simmon’s ideas, you could use the images to explore different interpretations of the ending.

Here we go…