Engaging with Drama in the English classroom

I'm an English teacher but I don't really go to watch theatre all that often. I'd like to, but every time I try the dog eats my ticket and then I'm not able to.

So, when I first started teaching I found it a little difficult to get my head around teaching the Drama component of English. Back when I was a student, doing a play like Cosi or Macbeth simply meant reading the play and then answering some questions about it, and for some people this is still the best way to approach the study of a play. But, having been exposed to (slightly) more theatre now and seeing how some other teachers approach Drama, I'm all too aware that in order to make a play into a living, breathing thing there must be some engagement with the fact that it's a text that's designed to be performed.

You have to get your students to be okay with this while they're relatively young. A class of energetic Year 7s are more likely to perform a play in the class room than your typically seasoned and battle-hardened Year 10s. The sooner the teacher engages kids in the idea of performance as a reasonable way to respond to a text, the more helpful it will be in getting our students to think about plays in the terms that they're meant to be thought about in.

It's therefore really useful to teach the Drama-specific techniques used by playwrights, directors, production crews and acting ensembles. One such aspect of production that's fun and fairly easy to get Year 7s to work with is blocking.

Blocking refers to where actors are instructed to stand in relation to the space allowed by the set on stage. It's used in film as well, but in theatre it is far more important because the actors need to consider the audience. If an actor is accidentally facing away from the audience, it makes it difficult for the audience to identify or understand what's going on. Likewise, if the actors all face the audience directly, all of the time, it can make the action in the play feel too contrived and artificial.

Below is a resource that can be adapted for use with any play. The top section of the sheet shows an example of how the opening scene of the play The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tiler could be blocked, and the section below shows an empty stage space.

1. Explain to students the process of blocking and why it's useful. Get them to look closely at the example on the sheet.
2. Ask students to use the space below to block a scene out of their choice from the class text. Make sure that they label each character, object, and set piece that they choose to feature.
3. Project the sheet on the whiteboard and get some students to come up and draw their examples of blocking on for the rest of the class to see.
4. If you have a highly engaged and passionate class, get the students to block the scene at the front of the classroom in small groups. 

This should take about 20-25 minutes.

Resource: Blocking