How to Approach Speaking and Listening through Drama

How to Begin with Teacher in Role

Why use teacher in role?

One of the best ways to do that in drama work is to be inside the drama. Therefore, at the centre of the dramas that we include in this book, is the key teaching technique that is used, namely teacher in role . Many times we have watched trainee teachers with a class of children struggling to get attention when giving instructions in traditional teacher mode. Yet, as soon as they move into role, they obtain that attention more effectively.

For example, a trainee was talking out of role to a class to explain that they were about to meet a girl who was having trouble with her father and needed their help. She picked up a ribbon with a ring threaded on it and put it round her neck as the role signifier. The trainee was not doing anything different apart from using role and committing to it very strongly. The trainee was using the simplest form of TiR, hot-seating the role, where the class meets the role sitting in front of them and can ask questions.

You are not effective as a teacher if you do not at some point engage fully with the drama yourself by using TiR. Remaining as teacher, intervening as teacher, side-coaching, structuring the drama from the outside, and/or sending the class off in groups to create their own drama must at best restrict and at worst negate any opportunity for the teacher to teach effectively. It is far more effective for the teacher to engage with the drama form as artist and be part of the creative act. It is very useful in a Literacy lesson for the teacher to use roles from the text.

Teacher as storyteller

The teacher as a storyteller is something all primary school teachers will recognise. The pupil’s role will be dominated by listening and this will be interlaced with questioning, responding and interpreting the meaning and sense of the fiction. The teacher’s role will be to communicate the text in a lively and interesting manner, holding their attention and engaging their imagination. In making judgements about the quality of this method of teaching, the critical questions will be around whether the content of the story interests the class and holds their attention, whether the delivery of the teacher.

The connection between the teacher as storyteller and the teacher using drama, lies in the fact that they both use the generation of imagined realities in order to teach. The relationship between story and drama in education is a complex and dynamic one. A class can take part in a drama where all of them know the story, where none of them knows the story, or a mixture of both. As long as some fundamental planning strategies are observed, knowledge of the story is not a barrier to participation.

The use of drama strategies to explore events and their consequences, to look at alternatives and test them. 3 If narrative consists of roles, fictional contexts, the use of symbols and events then the teacher needs to hold some of those elements true and consistent with the story so far. Let us illustrate these ideas with an example from ‘The Pied Piper’ drama. You put the pupils in role as the townspeople making their way up the mountain when they meet TiR as a child coming in the opposite direction.

Preparation for the role

In preparing to be this kind of storyteller the teacher must have made particular decisions about this child. Begin by asking the class out of role what they want to ask the child and the order of those questions. This not only provides the teacher with some security in knowing what is going to be asked, at least initially, but also allows some minutes to refine the planning, so that the teacher can be specific in answering their questions. The questions will, to a certain extent, be predictable because they are largely generated by the circumstances of the drama so far and the role the class has taken, which will be that of anxious parents.

Before the drama session, decide what attitude you are going to take when questioned by the class.

Moving in and out of role – managing the drama and reflecting on it

We are describing using role as ‘teaching from within’ because the teacher enters the drama world, but it is very important to step out of the fiction often and not let it run away with itself. When using TiR, the teacher is operating as a manager as well as participant and must spend as much time stopping the drama and moving out of role to reflect on what is happening and give the pupils a chance to think through what they know and what they want to do. This OoR working is as important as the role itself. Let us look at an example to see how you as the teacher have the opportunity to negotiate how the role behaves with the class.

That’s another piece of evidence to take to the Mayor. There are too many of them for me as the town rat-catcher to catch. The whole class is involved in defining the role and can use their imaginations, their ‘drama eyes’, to help create the appropriate appearance/behaviour and their own understanding. This is in contrast to an actor who has to use acting skills to create the role in its entirety for an audience.

We are making a distinction between role behaviour and acting. Both depend on appropriate signing, but whereas the actor must give the non-participant audience the bulk of the signing, a teacher using role can get away with a committed minimum. The class will see the Rat-catcher as overworked and probably needing help to put his/her case to the Mayor. When you have discussed enough you can move back into role and take their stories about the problems the rats are causing.

Children commit to the fictional world of the drama but need always to be aware that it is fiction and to step outside it often to look at what they are doing. The drama is stopped they can describe, recap, interpret, think through, consider next moves and Contrary to some opinions, depth is not dependent upon maintaining the fiction all of the time, nor does it depend upon the children losing themselves in the drama. In fact, if the latter takes over, children will get an experience but not understanding. In effective drama, children can actually feel the ‘as if’ world as real at certain points. The teacher must make sure that if the drama does engage in that way, the pupils know it is a fiction at all times, especially by stopping and coming out of role frequently.

The requirements of working in role

This will help us shape up the TiR elements particularly according to how the audience is seeing things. Here are two responses to considering the ‘audience’ position. In drama the pupils are making sense actively, knowing their meaning can be acted upon. They have to switch from operating as audience to participant and back again often and suddenly.

This is why this sort of whole group drama has so much learning potential. It involves the ‘audience’ in the process of the play-making, at the same time pro- viding the teacher with ways of influencing directly the situation and the meanings. But that is only most effective if the teacher is skilled in genuinely responding to the contributions of the class members at moments where they take the initiative and make suggestions, those critical incidents where they are teaching themselves and each other. An example of responding to the critical incident occurred in a session on the drama based on Macbeth.

Disturbing the class productively

The teacher’s function is to provide challenge and stimulus, to give problems and issues for the class to have to deal with. The drama is developed through a set of activities that build the class role, which is usually a corporate role. We have to help them into the drama, making them comfortable, and then disturb that comfort productively. In setting up the drama we are doing what Heathcote calls ‘trapping within a life situation.

The result of constructing the situation thus is that they can then discover what it all means. An example of this occurs in ‘The Governor’s Child’, a drama based on Brecht’s Caucasian Chalk Circle. The class are in role as a village community helping a woman with a baby, who, unbeknownst to them, has fled a revolution.

The teacher–taught relationship

In all teaching situations there exists a power relationship between the learners and the teacher. Of course, it does not look like this when the class are responding and contracting into the tasks set by the teacher but should some or all decide not to, the cohesion can be broken. In drama this power relationship is made overt. We must start from the point of view that if the class do not want the drama to work then it will not.

The nature of drama makes the interest level a dynamic and flexible dimension. The pupils will, to a cer- tain extent, define a level of interest in a drama by focusing upon the issues that interest them. In the classroom, the pupils enter into an agreement with you the teacher that you are in charge. This may be a tacit agreement, it may depend upon many factors but in it the teacher is in charge and there are certain rights and privileges attached to your role.

The power relationship is asymmetric. Of course, in drama we have the possibility of shifting the power when we are inside the fiction because we may choose a role that has low status and has little power. This shift in status and power is very engaging for pupils. It can result in a different kind of dialogue from the usual teacher/pupil one and this can be very attractive to pupils.

So what are the possibilities in terms of power and choosing a role? There are five basic types of role and mostly can be illustrated from the ‘The Dream’ drama. The authority role This is a role like the Duke in the ‘The Dream’ drama, who is presented with Egeus’s problem and has to rule on it. This figure is usu- ally in charge of an organisation and has the class in a role subordinate to him/her. The role is fair, applies rules and governs properly, but often does not know the full facts and issues and needs the class to investigate and enlighten him/her.

It is very close to being teacher and can be reassuring for a class, but also has the negativity of not changing the teacher–taught relationship enough to allow more ownership for the class. The opposer role This is a role that is often in authority but dangerous to and/or creating a problem for another role and, by extension, the class. Egeus is an opposer role who is against Hermia and therefore in opposition to the class role, as they take her side against his dictatorial treatment of her. This is a stim- ulating position for many pupils as the opposition of parents is something they have all experienced.

The opposer role has to be used carefully because the response to it can be difficult to handle if it becomes too strong. The intermediate role This is often a messenger or go-between, as the ser- vant role used in the ‘The Dream’ drama. This role is then caught between opposing sides and can appeal to the empathy in the class to help them out of the predicament. The needing help role This is a role like Hermia, who is in need of help to fight the injustice of her father’s decision.

This role, like the servant described above, is the best way to get empathy from a class and most raises the status of the class, putting them in a position of responsibility and thus generating interest and learning possibility because the teacher is the one who does not know what to do for once. The ordinary person This role is in the same position as the role given to the class. We do not have this sort of role in our ‘The Dream’ drama but the Steward in the ‘Macbeth’ drama is like this. The three low status roles present more possibilities for the pupils’ learning because the teacher–pupil power relationship is shifted and they have a sem- blance of power.

We say ‘semblance’ because the pupil power only lies within the fiction and, as always, the teacher is running the class and can come out of role at any time to assume control. Related to issues of power and role is the issue of power and control in the classroom. Let us look at what might appear to be a potential recipe for chaos in the planning of a lesson on ‘The Pied Piper’ and analyse how it is han- dled and chaos avoided. The class have been told they must confront the Mayor.

Before we can confront the Mayor we must set out how his office looks. This is the Mayor’s parlour. The distance between the chairs indicates how big the class want the door to be. This is the desk and chair in which the Mayor sits.

Tell me about the desk. Use your ‘drama eyes’ and tell me what you see. The class offer suggestions, building the image of the desk. They then do the same with the Mayor’s chair.

The townspeople are marching down to the Mayor’s parlour. The chant is rehearsed and when it feels and sounds like an angry crowd it is ready to be used. So, we have a parlour, we have an angry crowd and a chant. We need someone to give a signal to stop the chant otherwise we won’t hear the knock on the door and the conversation with the Mayor.

Finally we need one person to be spokesperson to say to the Mayor what you all think. I am going to take the role of the Mayor and I am going wear my chain of office. When I take it off I will be your teacher again and we can talk about what has happened. Get rid of the mayor.

This gets louder and louder until the signal is given to stop and there is a loud knock on the door. As Mayor you get up and move around to the front of the table, half sitting on it in an informal way.

You break out of role

OK, let’s stop the drama there and look at what has happened. This response is not expected by the class. They expect the Mayor to argue. The key issue in this example is the way in which a potentially chaotic event in the drama is managed by careful structuring and rehearsing before it takes place.