Process drama
Introduction
Process drama (images 1, 2, 3, 8, 9, and 11, poster 1) is improvised role play. Its main purpose is to give students the chance to participate in learning, enquiry, or discovery rather than to present drama to an external audience.
However, if the students or teacher wish to do so, opportunities can be found to present a process drama informally, or the work can be developed through to a staged performance.
Process drama allows teachers to integrate drama in the classroom with other essential learning areas, in particular English, health, and social studies.
For a detailed description of a specific process drama, and ways in which it can support work in different curriculum areas, refer to poster 3 key information.
Negotiating role
When beginning to develop roles with students, teachers need to make clear when the drama begins and what roles they and the students will take on. Time needs to be spent developing the students’ roles.
Belief in the roles and in the drama world are fundamental to the success of a drama experience. Some ways of building belief in role and in the drama are listed below.
You could suggest that your students create a title and/or a name for their role. They could make badges or name tags as a lead-in to introducing themselves to other participants at the beginning of the drama. The students in image 1 on poster 3 created name tags identifying their roles as experts in various fields. They introduced themselves to the group, improvising a short description of their character’s background. At the end of the drama session, the students could de-role very simply by taking off their label.
If appropriate, ask your students in role to fill out a form or questionnaire or to complete a brief task to ensure their commitment to the imaginary world.
Ask students (working in groups) to draw something significant to the roles they are undertaking. On poster 1, the students in image 9 created their own money for their market stalls, and the students in image 6 drew a map charting the expected journey of their pirate ship.
As a group, create a ritual to mark a significant event for the people in the drama.
Suggest that the students mime the work or an activity that their role performs in a particular situation or at a particular time (image 5 on poster 1 or image 6 on poster 4).
Image 5, poster 1
Use a freeze frame to show a significant moment in the life of the role (images 3 and 11, poster 1 or images 4 and 8 on poster 3).
Enter the drama as teacher in role and ask questions to elicit information about a particular situation. Image 8 shows a teacher in role as a shopkeeper confronting a student in role about the graffiti on the outside of her shop. For more information about this particular drama, see pages 41–47 of Telling Our Stories and view the appropriate sections of the video.)
For an example of young students taking on a role, see The Art: Drama exemplar example and video Sanja Is a Vet.