How do you infuse in children the confidence to negotiate the ever-changing world around them? By just telling them to become confident, or by enabling them to experience and develop their own frames of reference?
With this objective, a group of theatre profess-ionals convened by London and Connecticut-trained Jehan Manekshaw started Theatre Professionals Pvt. Ltd (estb. 2008), a Mumbai-based company to professionalise and improve theatre and dramatics standards in India. The prime objectives of the company are to train actors, conduct capacity building workshops in the performing arts, and offer and execute drama curriculum solutions in schools. We believe that in drama classes and workshops, students literally put themselves in others’ shoes, helping them realise the importance of compassion and empathy.
For a long time, teaching of dramatics in schools has been grossly misunderstood as teaching children to develop elocution skills — an activity that enables them to become better orators and public speakers and develop confidence — in this case, defined as the ability to stand up and perform before audiences.
Yet taught creatively dramatics does much more. At the most basic level, exercises and activities in a drama class enthuse child-ren to become focused, attentive and interested in learning. At another level, it prompts them to under-stand and empathise with others. But most import-antly, the regular application of exercises taken from rehearsals into classrooms empowers every child by demonstrating that she is capable of finding her own creative solutions to negotiate scenarios in the classroom and subsequently in life.
The Theatre Professionals initiative is based on the simplest of premises: ‘Drama’ (the word itself stems from Latin root to do) is simply learning by doing. It enables experiential learning and ensures there’s space for positive reflection relating to experiences. Thus by encouraging learning by doing and post-event reflection and assessment, the study and teaching of dramatics can ‘dramatically’ improve classroom learning outcomes.
An example would perhaps help to demonstrate the power of teaching-learning dramatics. In class VII of one school there was a problem with focus. Often the curriculum wasn’t challenging enough — especially for smarter children in class. Therefore we conceptualised a characterisation exercise under which children were made to adopt a character from the real world. All students selected and represented a character they observed in everyday life, and studied how the chosen character walked, spoke, dressed, gestured and represented him/herself. Each week they were made to refine the chosen character further, always striving towards closer representation of their subject. Sufficiently challenged, the students experienced the result of constant application to a task. Finally, after they had sufficiently mimicked and represented the chosen real-life character, they were asked to improvise situations in which their characters interacted with each other.
Consistent reflection and self-assessment of their work is what professional actors do. Similar exercises create awareness among students of their own physical and psychological capabilities as individuals and group performers. Certainly it deepens students’ understanding and appreciation of the viewpoints of the characters they portray on stage. Surely this is a first step towards learning to respect the views/characters of other children in class.
A drama class is a safe space for children to explore their thoughts and express them through action. It is a non-judgemental space, where they feel less apprehensive about expressing their opinions or pursuing a line of thought, while interpreting the characters they are asked to portray. In some schools we do ‘memory searches’. Students are encouraged to dig deep into their personal history to identify and understand formative influences. Introspection and remembrance of things past enables children to become comfortable with themselves and learn from their mistakes.
Drama and role playing works because it is inclusive. There is so much stress in our education system on the written word that development of verbal communication skills is often ignored. Because it is action-oriented, dramatics education lets children express themselves verbally and gives children with poor writing skills an outlet and opportunity to participate, shine and develop confidence. Especially for kinesthetic visual learners, drama lets them engage mind and body while developing their focus and creativity.
Not surprisingly, great teachers and seers like Sri Aurobindo and Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore were strong proponents of teaching through the arts. Their work and philosophy strongly advocate integration of the performing arts in education for the development of the mind. They instinctively understood that learning by doing builds the confidence of children to devise creative solutions to the known and unknown challenges of life.
(Sananda Mukhopadhyaya is a core team member of the Theatre Professionals Drama in Schools Programme, Mumbai)