Drama: Initiation

One big goal for my students by the end of the year is to perform a drama. The idea was to improve their speaking skills through that. Once I started the sessions I realised that there are so many by products which I get from the drama, the improvement in speaking is just a small part of it.

I considered myself zero in the realm of acting, forget about teaching it. My friend and colleague Aditya, who is a professional, came to my class to kick off the session with me. Adi first put some ground rules in place and then gave the kids a monologue.

Hei Mr. Apple, you have hurt me a lot. So, I will kill you and eat you. Ha ha ha..

The emotions with which they were supposed to be done were also given. Happy, sad and angry. One third of the kids were assigned one of these emotions. They were also given 3-4 mins to prepare. Then the kids started performing and I almost had my jaws on the floor. I found a completely different set of students in front of me. Some of them were very nervous, but some of them looked like they have been doing this for their whole life or they were meant to do this. In fact acting made them come alive, blossom. We rated them on a few parameters for our reference for matching their roles in the drama.

Then they were given a dialogue between the lion and the mouse in the story "Lion and the Mouse". The kids were paired up and were given 5 mins to prepare. They performed and dazzled me.

Taniya in std. VI cannot read even a single English word. But when she came in front of the audience and cried looking at Mr. Apple in hand, I wondered where was this girl hiding all this while. Shahid in std. VII just started speaking in English this year and has a vocabulary of less than 100 words in English now. But when he roared and laughed as the lion letting go the erred mouse, I could almost see his mane.

That day I left from school with a completely different view of my kids and a huge smile on my face.

I was supposed to get another professional to come and do the casting and training for the drama. But there was a delay of a week for her to come. So I decided to handle the class on my own till then. There I discovered that I am not really as bad as I thought and I could show my kids a thing or two myself. Day after day, I kept giving my kids new scenarios and dialogues and they acted them out. By the end of one week the transformation I saw in some of the kids was stunning. The voice became louder and clearer for some who were nervously speaking in the beginning. The confidence levels were soaring.

I am so excited about the possibilities the drama sessions are bringing and I have never seen my kids so much excited about anything. May be this is the answer to a lot of questions for me and for my kids. Lets wait and watch.