Week 2 - Drama

The emphasis of this weeks’ Drama lecture was on readers’ theatre. According to the NSW BOS Creative Arts k-6 syllabus, readers’ theatre “…involves a rehearsed reading for an audience where participants build, sustain and resolve dramatic tension within the context of the drama through gesture and language.” (p. 91). We learnt about the importance of emphasising voice qualities when modelling readers’ theatre through exploring tone, pitch, volume, accent, stress and playing with pace and silent pauses for dramatic effect.

We had the opportunity to participate in our own piece of readers’ theatre in the drama workshop. My group was assigned the poem ‘on the ning nong nang’ and it was great to be able to employ some of the techniques we had heard about in the lecture. My group presented our reading of the poem through the use of levels (low, mid, high), experimenting with pitch, volume and tone and incorporating movement. 

I particularly enjoyed the planning process prior to our performance, as it was interesting to hear differing opinions on everything from what the text meant to discussion of what each individual should be doing during the performance.

Indeed, Ewing and Simons ( 2004, p. 84) recognise that “Working co-operatively to unpack the meaning(s) of a text can be one of the best ways to demonstrate that everyone brings their own prior experiences to anything they read, and there is no right way to interpret a text”. This certainly proved to be the case when my group was discussing the poem. It was refreshing to hear the perspectives of my group mates as some of them had very different ideas to myself as to what the text meant and how best to deliver it, but we were able to reconcile our differences and arrive at a final script that we were all happy with.

References 

NSW Department of Education and Training. 2000. Creative Arts K-6 Syllabus. Sydney:
DET.

Ewing, R. & Simons, J. 2004. Beyond the script: Drama in the classroom. Take 2. 2nd ed.
Sydney: PETA.