Deciding on roles
When deciding what roles the students (and teacher) might take on, teachers need to consider a number of things, such as a pretext that opens up a variety of suitable roles, how to build tension or motivation for the students, and how to create distance to allow the students to reflect and consider.
A good pretext (source) for a drama offers roles suitable for the students and the teacher. For example, the pretext for the drama in image 11, poster 1 was a letter from the inspectors threatening further action because the lighthouse keeper, Mr Grinling, has been oversleeping. (This drama is based on the story The Lighthouse Keeper’s Rescue by Rhonda and David Armitage. See Playing Our Stories pages 40–42.
The pretext suggested roles such as the inspectors, the villagers visiting the lighthouse, and the central characters of Mr and Mrs Grinling. Each of these people will have very different opinions about the central problem in the story. Investigating these different opinions provides the tension to drive the drama. Image 11 shows the moment when the inspector asks Mr Grinling to hand over his key to the lighthouse.
By withholding some important information or structuring the drama to ensure that the students want to find out more, the teacher can:
- develop tension (a motivator for the students) in the drama
- help them to look at what is happening from a range of perspectives.
An example would be a process drama that investigates a central character who the participants do not initially, or may never, meet.
When deciding what roles the students will take on, it is also important to create distance from who the students are in real life so that they can consider the action of the drama in ways that they normally might not.
Further information on how to frame roles to create distance and suggest different perspectives can be found in the key information section for poster 3 and in Telling Our Stories and Playing Our Stories.