Wk 8: Using Literature as a step into Drama
The warm up:
Today we started off by playing a game, this game was one that i had played before with quite a few variations. It was called ‘Zip, Zap, Boing’ and it is very funny and made me laugh very much whilst learning the ‘extras’.
The game begins with a zip being passed around the circle, you clap your hands in the direction the group is passing the zip around the circle. If you want to change directions you say zap and change the direction of the clap. If you want it to bounce back to the person who passed it to you, you can sayboing and put both your hands in the air and the clap will automatically be passed to that same person who sent it to you. This was as far as i knew the game but there is more….
Next you could add a gun, pointing your fingers ina gun shape towards any person around the circle letting them continue on with the game.
Next you could say freak out and then everyone rushes around the room freaking out ina panic and then returning to make a circle and continue on with the game.
The next one was ‘Ohhhh’, where the person holds one arm above their head in front of their face and the down in front of their body and they bring the circle together to make it small as the rest of group moves in with them making the ‘oh’ noise soft, the whole circle becomes very small and the game continues onina shoulder to shoulder circle of people who are whispering, zip etc. Then you can also make it big again by saying ‘Ohhh’ in soft then becoming loud way and everyone opens their hands up to create a big circle where the game continues.
We then could ask a question to anyone around the circle by clapping our hands in their direction.Eg: ‘What did you have for breaky’ , the person does not have to answer truthfully and can respond with ‘Green eggs and ham’.
The last one was adding in an emotion, so anyone who had the power around the circle could say ’sad’ and everyone had to continue on with the game with that emotion, and it could change all the way through the game.
You could introduce one of these to every class as a warm up activity and it would be really fun to play with students, they could even create their own add on!!
We then got into the class by talking about Boal’s theatre of the oppressed and looked into sexual harassment. We saw one group who had a classroom full of girls checking out the male teacher and asking him invalid questions that were nothing to do with the task he was setting. We watched and saw the girls asking the teacher if he worked out and if he had a girlfriend and the teacher did not respond very well as he was very soft and a little too kind to them and ended up in a bad predicament where he was left alone in the classroom with one of the female students. We then gave the player (teacher) some options asBoal did in his theatre, the audience gave feedback, so they replayed the scene and when the audience thought that the teacher could change his behaviour an audience member would yell ’stop’ and the actors would stop and take on the advice. the audience was not satisfied with the actor once more so then the audience had the option to yell ’stop’ and come and take over the teachers role, showing him the right way to do it. I thought that this was a fantastic way to work with drama and give people options.
We then moved on to literature where we looked into the fact that there was not just one form of literature but many. We then got into a line based on the first letter of our first name in alphabetical order, then our last names in alphabetical order, then middle names, which i was already out as idont have one. Then there was another line made for 3rd and 4th names!! This lead into a book about a boy with four names. He was a young boy who went to visit the old people in a home and liked one woman who had as many names as he did, he found out that she was losing her memories and so he went and asked everyone he knew what a memory was and then gathered together all of this really cute stuff to give to the elderly woman so that she could find her memories. She actually did remember many things as the things that were given to her triggered bits and pieces of her life. We looked at what else we could have done with the book to create drama: could hot seat the nursing home workers, re-create her memories, use still images, make a tableau.
We then looked at not just jumping into the text but actually making drama before reading the text and creating a world for students. We looked at a book on witches and how their evil ways can lead to bad things happening. We looked at a picture that we could re-create a scene for, all the animals, the witches etc and discussed what could be happening in the picture. Jo then left the room and re-entered the room as Bessy a kind and gentle woman who had a long story to tell about her life, being widowed, having a son who fell in love with a girl he could not be with and Bessy needed her son to help her on the farm. We then did a short role play based on this and it ends up being that the father of the girl turns everyone against Bessy as he is in a role of power and that anyone who is caught helping her will be punished but everyone is in a dilemma as Bessy is a kind and gentle healer.