Teaching with Dramatized Experience

Teaching with Dramatized Experience

Dramatized experiences can range from formal plays, pageants, to less formal tableau, pantomime, puppets, and role playing.

Plays depict life, character, or culture, or a combination of all three. They offer excellent opportunities to portray vividly important ideas about life.

Pageants are usually community dramas that are based on local history, presented by local actors. An example is a historical pageant that traces the growth of a school.

Pantomime is the art of conveying a story through bodily movements only (Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary).

Tableau (a French word which means picture) is a picture - like scene composed of people against background. It is often used to celebrate Independence Day, Christmas and United Nations Day.

Dale claims that puppets, unlike the regular stage play can present ideas with extreme simplicity – without elaborate scenery or costume – yet effectively.

Types of Puppets

Shadow puppets – flat black silhouette made from lightweight cardboard and shown behind a screen.

Rod puppets - flat cut out figures tacked to a stick, with one or more movable parts, and operated from below the stage level by wire rods or slender sticks.

Hand puppets – the puppets head is operated by the forefinger of the puppeteer, the little finger and thumb are being used to animate the puppet hands.

Glove and Finger puppets – makes use of old gloves to which small costumed figure are attached.

Marionettes – flexible, jointed puppets operated by strings or wire attached to a cross bar and maneuvered from directly above the stage.

Making Puppet Theaters

          1.      Nail the stick legs to each corner of a wooden crate that has two sides removed.

          2.      Drape cloth from the bottom of the box and tack it around sides and front. Operators crouch                      behind the theater.

          3.      You may also use pieces of plywood, heavy cardboard, or to produce a self – standing                              puppet theater.

What Principles must be observed in choosing a puppet play for teaching?

      Dale, (1996) quoting from the puppeteers of America offers many suggestions, among which are the following:

·         Do not use puppets for play that can be done just as well or better by other dramatic means.

·         Puppets plays must be based on action rather than on words.

·         Keep the play short.

·         Do not omit the possibilities of music and dancing as part of the puppet show.

·         Adapt the puppet show to the age, background, and tastes of the students.

Role playing is an unrehearsed, unprepared and spontaneous, dramatization of a “let’s pretend” situation where assigned participants are absorbed by their own roles in the situation described by the teachers.

How is role playing done?

It can be done by describing a situation which would create different viewpoints on an issue and then asking the students to play the roles of the individuals involved. Any kind of conflict situations, real or potential is useful for role playing or any situation in which real feelings are concealed. Consider situations in school, at home, on the playground, at work, in government. The role playing has to be followed by a discussion. Among the questions that may be asked are:

·         How did you, as actors, feel? Would you act/think that way in real life?

·         As observers, would you agree with what the actors said or did?

·         Any lessons learned?