Creating space
This section is about using drama conventions to create the space.
Drama conventions are ways of working in drama to explore and show meaning. (Refer to the poster 3 notes for further information about structuring drama through conventions.) The following list of conventions might be used to establish and explore the context and setting (place) of a drama.
Through teacher narration and careful questioning about what the children can see in a new imaginary space, the teacher can quickly establish the space without needing to add props. The teacher working with the students in image 6, poster 4 might say: “Now the crew are boarding the pirate ship. They quickly take up their work positions. The captain steers this boat from the rear. Does anyone know what we call the back part of a ship? How big is the pirate ship’s steering wheel? What can the lookouts see from the rails? Is land in sight? Are there other ships? Or what else could be there?”
Teachers and/or students dress performance spaces with objects and symbolic representations of a particular imagined place or setting before stepping in to take on a role. Images 9 and 10 on poster 1 show dressed spaces: the former prepared by the class through their dramatic play to represent a market and the latter dressed in advance to show a television interview.
Asking the class or smaller groups to make a collective image (image 10, poster 4) to represent a place in a drama encourages belief in the drama, helps to clarify and establish the setting, and engages the students as a team working to create a shared vision.
Mapping helps students establish belief in the drama. For example, a role might need to undertake a journey in the drama. Creating a map will establish the path; any significant points on the journey, where the traveller could stop or change course; possible difficulties; and the distance. Creating a map can be used to clarify and consolidate the group’s ideas about where different characters live in relation to one another and places of community interest (the town hall, the site of a proposed motorway). Students can also use the created map as they reflect on the drama. Image 7, poster 4 shows a process drama map of a fictitious nineteenth-century mining village. The students have mapped and named the village, adding buildings that have particular significance for the people who live there.
Students can use voices, objects, and instruments to create a soundtrack evocative of a particular place. The soundtrack may be realistic or stylised. The sounds can be natural, such as crickets chirping and wind in a field at dusk (sometimes called wild or ambient sound). Alternatively, students can create atmospheric sound to develop the mood, for example, of a haunted house (a clock striking twelve, mournful owl hoots, a creaking door).
The resource Radio Drama: Bow Down Shadrach is aimed at level 6, but can be adapted to other levels. It includes consideration of the use of sound or soundscapes in recorded drama.
See also the level 4 resource A Group Soundscape.
Teachers and students can use furniture and objects already in the teaching space to define the space or represent the place (image 8, poster 4) where a drama will happen. They could also use masking tape or chalk to mark off the rooms in a house or streets in a town on the classroom floor or playground. Discussing and negotiating where things will go or what they will represent contributes to belief in the drama.
The convention mantle of the expert allows students to work in role as high-status experts with important knowledge or skills. This convention can be used when first creating dramatic space, with the students in role as architects, designers, or builders charged with creating a space or building central to the drama. In image 1 on poster 1, the students in role as historical and scientific experts provide advice to the museum curator on what some newly discovered artefacts suggest about an abandoned mining village.