Suggested activities
The following activities can be used with the play texts associated with this poster. The common learning intention is that students develop empathy with the issues and values explored in New Zealand theatre.
Activity 1
Research points of history and cultural practice represented in the plays and present your findings in a discussion; a semi-documentary format; or as one or more tableaux, using a narrator.
Example (a)
IRIS:
Wish I had your faith. Look, when I was twelve I saw my mother and father and their friends run out of town simply because they tried to get better conditions for workers. Did the papers take any notice? Like hell they did. There was a man killed then – who knows about that?
DOT:
You mean Waihi?
IRIS:
Yes.
DOT:
I do.
IRIS:
You’d be on your own then.
Wednesday to Come, act 2 (pages 36–37).
Example (b)
MISS MASON:
… to celebrate our great victories in South Africa, I’ve a silk badge for each and every one of you. (She hands them out.) But not for those who are late. There is no badge for being late. Last week, one of us here (the CHILDREN focus on that one) failed to bring even a penny for the starving children of India. Isn’t that right, children? …
CHORUS, (circling round ALBANY and singing as children):
We’re soldiers of the Queen, my lads,
All been, my lads, who’ve seen, my lads
In the fight for England’s glory, lads
We’re England’s soldiers of the Queen!
Children of the Poor, act 1 (pages 34–35).
Example (c)
AROHA:
Look over there. What do you see? The oranges and lemons of the Atkinson orchard. See instead a great totara forest. And here where my house stands. See the pekerangi where the warriors crouched, muskets set to fire. Down there on the beach, where the Pakeha children play, see the great ship Alcestis, white sails spreading, moving into Te Parenga Bay. Four hundred soldiers aboard her, red coats and crossed straps …
The Pohutukawa Tree, act 1, scene 1 (page 19)
Activity 2
Find thematic patterns in a range of quotations as a way of exploring what New Zealand plays say. Copy short (five-to-ten-line) extracts from a wide variety of plays onto pieces of coloured card, with each colour representing a general theme, such as family or land. Collate the colours and analyse each theme in more depth by looking closely at the grouped quotations to support your thoughts.
Activity 3
Closely investigate a two-page extract from a play. Read and annotate it several times, each time looking for new information. Use the discussion questions (in the previous section) as a guide.
Activity 4
Highlight the factual issues in a text by layering Brechtian devices into a workshopped scene. For example, create the banners the marchers might have used, or project images of the work camps and soup lines from the 1930s onto a scene from Wednesday to Come.
Activity 5
Banner image 3, poster 6
Reframe parts of a play to explore a range of points of view. For example, using the text of Claude Johnson’s speech in the wedding scene of The Pohutukawa Tree (act 1, scene 2, pages 32–33), devise dramatic monologues that expose the feelings and understandings of the other key guests: Aroha, Sylvia, Johnny, and Sedgwick. Insert the monologues into a workshopped scene. Discuss the points of view that the playwright makes explicit or implies.
Activity 6
Learn aspects of physical and vocal performance that are outside of your own cultural practice and rehearse them to the point where you can perform them in a scene with integrity and confidence. For example, learn the siva from the end of The Songmaker’s Chair or learn the karakia recited in the urupā in The Prophet. This idea of putting new knowledge in the body, as opposed to just in the head, helps develop understanding about what’s important in the cultures represented in plays.
Activity 7
Match the plays mentioned in this resource and any other plays that you know, with
thematic perspectives, such as:
- post-colonial
- Māori/Pākehā (bicultural)
- Māori
- Pasifika
- those of other cultures
or with
performance styles:
- melodramatic
- naturalist
- Brechtian
- post-modernist
- devised
- physical, using aspects of multimedia, dance-theatre, or spectacle
- fusing Māori and western performance styles
- fusing Pasifika and western performance styles.