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Drama Posters

Drama convention – Exploring role

This page includes information about drama conventions that can be used to investigate the thoughts and feelings of a role:

Introduction

Action is one of the elements of drama. Action refers not only to what the roles in the drama are doing, but also to their thoughts, attitudes, feelings, and opinions. In drama, these internal aspects of role can be made transparent through the use of particular conventions. A role’s inner thoughts and feelings may be at odds with that role’s outward appearance and what they say. Teachers need to build in opportunities for students to consider why this might be the case.

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Speaking thoughts aloud

Image 8, poster 3

In this convention, the action freezes and a character speaks his or her thoughts aloud to add tension, to provide information, or for some other purpose.

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Voices in the head

In this convention, a student who is not in role speaks the thoughts of another person who is in role. The teacher may facilitate this by freezing the action and nominating a student from the audience to stand beside or make physical contact with a student in the frozen scene and speak as the “voice in the head” of that role.

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Writing in role

Image 2, poster 3

In this convention, the students in role write with a particular purpose and in a particular context. In image 2 of poster 3, the students in role as First World War soldiers in the trenches are writing letters to send home to the mining town in West Coast New Zealand, describing their thoughts and feelings and what is happening to them.

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Teacher in role

Images 8, 9, poster 1

Teacher in role is both a convention and a teaching strategy in which the teacher manages a class from within a drama by taking a role. Teacher in role can be used to deepen and extend students’ enquiry and learning. This is an effective way to shift the balance of power in the classroom by changing the status of teacher and students and by handing more responsibility for decision making to the students.

When you invoke teacher in role, both you and your students improvise in role. When you use this drama strategy, some important considerations to think about are:

  • How will you signal to the students when you are in role and when you are the teacher? One easy way is to have a prop or simple costume item that you hold or put on while you are in role. In image 8, the teacher wears a butcher’s apron to signal the role of the shopkeeper and removes it to signal that she is out of role. In image 9, the teacher picks up a shopping bag to show that she is in role as a shopper. Another way to signal role is to freeze before you begin and freeze once again at the end. (See the exemplar Gargoyles for an example.)
  • What status will you choose for your role? If you want to encourage your students to have a sense of empowerment and authority, it is best to put yourself into a lower-status role. Roles such as someone needing help or the second in command, who knows enough to be helpful but doesn’t have the direct power, are good possibilities. If you are in a high-status role (for example, as king or mine owner), the classroom status quo will be maintained. In the drama shown in image 9, the teacher subsequently takes on the role of a failed stallholder, and the students give her advice on how to be more successful.
  • Be clear with the students that you will be working in role alongside them. You might show them what signal you will use as you enter the drama, prepare a short in-role piece to introduce the drama context, and give the students a clear task to begin the drama.

For more information and video examples of teacher in role, refer to page 22 of Playing Our Stories (and the examples on the DVD) and to page 20 of Telling Our Stories.

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