Performance spaces and the drama curriculum
At curriculum levels 5–8, students need the opportunity to develop drama conventions, and to rehearse and perform in a range of dramatic forms. To achieve this, drama classes need access to a range of performance spaces.
Many schools reflect the ethnic mix of their roll in performance spaces. Elements of wharenui and fale can be incorporated into drama studios and auditoriums.
Drama specialists stress the need for a variety of flexible performance spaces. A variety of spaces caters for:
- intimate and more expansive performance styles
- large and small casts
- large and small audiences, including students, family and friends, and the public
- simple performances and others that require sets, lighting, and other technology
- the length of the performance (for cast and audience comfort).
Formal performances can be set up in basic drama rooms and, far more readily, in well-designed and well-equipped drama studios. This is one of the reasons that advice on this site stresses the need to design all drama teaching spaces to be open, flexible, and with good technology, storage, and ancillary facilities.
At times drama classes will want (and deserve) access to a quality purpose-built performance space. A real theatre is a useful and even inspiring performance space for drama students and their teachers.
However, experience suggests that sophisticated school theatres are less useful for classroom drama classes than anticipated – see the 'Theatres and auditoriums' section for a discussion of the issues involved.
Schools need to be realistic about how much major auditorium or theatre projects (including hall conversions) will contribute to curriculum drama programmes.
Many drama teachers prefer a large and well-equipped drama studio and/or ready access to a small theatre.