9. Drama for Kids (and not just)
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“Women of Troy” by Euripides (I’m the one at the end- pointing) The Greeks used the ever-present Chorus |
Reading the blog of a Volunteer in Kenya where ideas in doing drama with kids was welcome I spent the whole week looking through dust filled albums and lesson plans I had collected throughout my teaching years to see what I could come up with. Much to my regret I realized that much of the stuff I taught back in the 70s is almost impossible to teach nowadays. In those days children sat on chairs and wrote with pencils in notebooks- in this century that’s more difficult to achieve. I could be exaggerating since my teaching days, later in the 90s, were spent in what they called “difficult” schools- however the simple act of getting kids to sit on chairs (or anywhere else, for that matter) now, in some schools, is not to be taken for granted by any means.
Still, I remember that some of my best successes, by that I mean, when I had no disasters such as someone kicking someone else in the shins, or glued some damsel’s locks, was when everyone was involved in doing something. So forget the classical play where a dozen children have parts and the other 40 or so sit around scheming up something quite devilish to do.
The Greeks went the right way about doing drama when they invented the ever present “Chorus” which means everyone is on stage all of the time. This does not mean that one needs to do the celebrated Greek plays in order to do drama with children. A ‘play’ can easily be put together from the simplest of stories or even nursery rhymes well known to all the children. The more familiar a story the easier it is for the children to enact as everyone knows what they are doing and where they are going.
Take “Little Red Riding Hood” as an example… But one may well object, there’s only a handful of characters, what are the other 30 or so going to do? They are the “Chorus” of course- they are the bricks of the cottage, the logs of wood in the fireplace, the doors, windows, or the trees, clouds, mushrooms or flowers in the forest who hear and repeat what the characters are saying or give advice or warn or anything else that is apt to the event.
Example- Introduction:
We are the bricks.
We stand firm and still.
We see all,
We hear all,
We say all.
Each ‘brick’ can make a large drawing of a brick or wall and pin it on his or her chest, hence there is no need for any elaborate costumes. And this in turn is applied to all the ‘characters’ of the chorus.
All this means of course that there has to be a script of some sort. Improvisation is fine but only with small groups. With large groups the less left to chance the easier it is to control the situation and minimizes the risk of everyone going off, doing their own thing and the teacher ends up with complete bedlam instead of a class of sorts. Hence, the first stage would be to write the script and why should the teacher do it when she has umpteen of legitimate ‘writers’- the kids themselves.
This is How
Break up the story in scenes and make out a flash card for each scene. Make life easy for yourself, number the scenes and later get the children to do the same.
Divide the class in as many groups as there are scenes and give each group a flash card of a scene and ask them to write out what the characters are saying to each other in that scene and what the “chorus”, whose function is to eavesdrop and comment on the scene, is saying. If there is more than one teacher the better because the adults could go round each group honing the dialogue into acceptable language.
Each group copies out their scene with the number and title at the top and gives a copy to others involved which is everyone else in the class.
Still, I remember that some of my best successes, by that I mean, when I had no disasters such as someone kicking someone else in the shins, or glued some damsel’s locks, was when everyone was involved in doing something. So forget the classical play where a dozen children have parts and the other 40 or so sit around scheming up something quite devilish to do.
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In the 70s kids sat on chairs |
Take “Little Red Riding Hood” as an example… But one may well object, there’s only a handful of characters, what are the other 30 or so going to do? They are the “Chorus” of course- they are the bricks of the cottage, the logs of wood in the fireplace, the doors, windows, or the trees, clouds, mushrooms or flowers in the forest who hear and repeat what the characters are saying or give advice or warn or anything else that is apt to the event.
Example- Introduction:
We are the bricks.
We stand firm and still.
We see all,
We hear all,
We say all.
Each ‘brick’ can make a large drawing of a brick or wall and pin it on his or her chest, hence there is no need for any elaborate costumes. And this in turn is applied to all the ‘characters’ of the chorus.
All this means of course that there has to be a script of some sort. Improvisation is fine but only with small groups. With large groups the less left to chance the easier it is to control the situation and minimizes the risk of everyone going off, doing their own thing and the teacher ends up with complete bedlam instead of a class of sorts. Hence, the first stage would be to write the script and why should the teacher do it when she has umpteen of legitimate ‘writers’- the kids themselves.
This is How
Break up the story in scenes and make out a flash card for each scene. Make life easy for yourself, number the scenes and later get the children to do the same.
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| Kids find something devilish to do if they are not all involved... |
Each group copies out their scene with the number and title at the top and gives a copy to others involved which is everyone else in the class.
A ‘script’ of this sort could well be turned into a full scale performance- just like the real thing- especially in Kenya- under the red hot sky burning itself into the ashes of the night.
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By Eva Ulian: Impressionist Painter- Writer
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