I found ‘Photographs in the Mud’ by Dianne Wolfer and Brian Harrison-Lever, a picture book about fighting on the Kokoda Track, which I think would be a great stimulus for drama. It tells the stories of two soldiers, Jack (Australian) and Hoshi (Japanese), as they leave home and go into combat. I chose this topic because I think it is still important for students to understand the true horror of war (especially with the current media focus on returned soldiers committing suicide). Also, on my prac last year, many of the students were asking why we have Remembrance Day! The ‘core of the drama’ would focus on the individual, personal stories of the soldiers, and the ‘attitudes’ and ‘tension points’ would obviously change with each group of students (Cushworth & Simons 1997).

I would work in the same way as Jennifer Simons did with ‘The Great Bear’ in that I would not initially read the whole story, but would select a few pages to show and would gradually reveal more information. I would probably work backwards by showing the final page where a group of soldiers find that one of the men involved in a shootout (Jack or Hoshi?) is still alive. I would get students to perform a re-enactment. Then would rewind to when Jack and Hoshi are walking through the jungle and would get them to vent the two characters feelings, etc. At this stage I would introduce an unfinished material (a letter?) or private property (photos), and this would introduce the family members left behind. Then I would show the opening two pages where both men leave their wives and would ask the class to perform this as a split screen, paying attention to using parallel/conflicting dramatic elements to highlight similarities/differences. Then it would be interesting to read the entire story and discuss what insights the drama revealed about the characters.

I certainly think that drama teachers have ‘professional craft knowledge’, and are almost artists in their own right (Simons 2002). I think drama teachers are particularly sensitive to their students needs; and are often the most flexible in the classroom. This is often because we have trained as actors and have therefore literally put ourselves in other peoples’ shoes. There is the whole psychological aspect of trying to understand other characters (or students!) and their motivations, and learning to improvise in different situations, which works to our advantage in the classroom.

I’ve always understood the concept of ‘role protection’ and how this is a vital tool in exploring point of view through drama; however I didn’t know it was termed ‘role protection’ until I’d read this article by Simons (2002). I find this one of the most interesting aspects of drama; the freedom it gives us to explore the darker (or lighter) side of human behaviour. I often forget I don’t have ‘role protection’ in daily life when I just spout off an opinion that I don’t necessarily believe in, just because it interests me!!! As teachers, we need to be aware of this device, and be careful that students are always protected and don’t divulge inappropriate personal information.

I was also interested in the phrase ‘a pool of distributed intelligence’ (Simons 2002) as this is a great metaphor for collaborative learning, which is a vital ingredient of drama. It also relates to a quote I recently read by Toni Collette (in Jetstar Magazine, April 2007), “It gets to the point, when you’re collaborating, that you can’t really identify what people are bringing and it feels like a very shared experience”. This nicely sums up what I’ve previously commented about our own group work in this drama class.

The unit explained in the Bunyan et al reading would be great to do as a lead up to a study of the play ‘The Crucible’. Other historical plays which could also benefit from a similar pretextual study are ‘No Sugar’, ‘Summer of the Seventeenth Doll’, ‘A Doll’s House’, and a lesser known play, ‘One Day in ’67′ (when Aborigines got the vote). I think these plays feature themes which are important to explore before a reading because often this generation don’t always understand social justice issues, such as racism and sexism, because they may not have personally been exposed to it.

I could go on and on about these FOUR (!) readings, but I am conscious of our word limit…

P.S. I hope everyone’s enjoying their prac? Mine’s sweet so far; I love teaching drama!