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Exploring Drama

An Extension Activity

Improvisation is making something up on the spot. It is about using imagination and just saying or doing the first thing that comes into your mind without thinking too much about it. Actors play a lot of improvisation games during rehearsal, and these games can be used to create a performance around an idea, a character or situation.
Michael Hurst

Actors use improvisation to explore and develop the control and use of their bodies (physical), voice (vocal), and imagination (mind). These three aspects are often referred to as the actors' tools. Through improvisation, students can not only develop and extend their thinking skills but also enhance their communication skills. When assuming different roles, the students are exploring how to use the gestures, movement, language, and tone of voice to communicate the character.

Improvisation is perhaps the most common and easily accessible type of drama used in schools. It need not always be open-ended: boundaries and limitations can be negotiated at the outset to direct the focus of the drama in a certain direction.

Working through improvisation also develops team skills. Relationship, negotiation, and cooperation are a necessary part of creating drama. Ground rules need to be negotiated at the beginning of this type of work so that it does not become superficial. Keep in mind that the object is not to entertain but to explore issues and express real feelings.

Improvisations are drafts of what could become polished presentations. Michael Hurst uses the phrase "in the moment". Improvisation is a basic activity that can be used to explore issues, characters, literature, and points of view, all helping students to understand the idea of being "in the moment".

Divide the class into groups. Each group will select one person to be the director. The director's task is to encourage ideas, enhance meaning, and assist the performers in communicating their presentation.

The opening line of the scene is: "I'm not coming here again!" Have students devise the next six lines of dialogue.

The students will, with the help of the director, construct the situation and contexts for the verbal exchange. As they rehearse their work, the director will be focusing on and enhancing the channels of communication in the following areas:

• vocal - words, sounds, tone, pace, pitch, and silence;
• physical - gesture, movement, use of face and eyes, posture, and stillness;
• space - proximity, spatial relationships, levels, and all visual aspects.

Curriculum Links
The Arts in the New Zealand Curriculum (Draft) describes four strands within the discipline of drama. These are Learning the Languages of Drama, Developing Ideas in Drama, Communicating and Interpreting Meaning in Drama, and Understanding Drama in Context. By learning about theatre in New Zealand, and by exploring stagecraft and characterisation by using the activity provided, Creative Explorer can be used to meet a number of achievement objectives at levels 3 and 4 of this curriculum statement.

Some Additional Resources
Drama is Real Pretending. Ministry of Education (Schools Division), Victoria, 1988.
Ministry of Education. Drama and Learning. Learning Media, Wellington, 1990. This kit contains two videotapes and a teachers' resource book.
Moore, Peter. When Are We Going to Have More Drama? Thomas Nelson, Melbourne, 1988.
Neelands, Jonothan. Structuring Drama Work: A Handbook of Available Forms in Theatre and Drama. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1990.
O'Neill, Cecily. Drama Worlds: A Framework for Process Drama. Heinemann, Portsmouth, NH, c. 1995.

 

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