The Drama Teacher

Thought I’d try a bit of live blogging from the classroom.

Year 9 Drama. Cohort: 14 year-old girls x 15 students. Comedy course exploring satire, parody, slapstick, farce.

Doing Part 1 of a two-part task exploring satire, but the notion of satire and parody not introduced yet.

Students have chosen a well-known celebrity to accurately mimic in their first performance. Aim: realistic imitation (Part 2 coming up in a few lessons time where aim will be to exaggerate the first performance).

Task origin: Centre Stage text by Matthew Clausen.

Students currently doing final rehearsal around classroom very quietly. They are taking task very seriously, which is both scary and a good thing – a very good thing

13 students remembered costume. 2 brought nothing or part-costume. Typical for Year 9, so no concerns there.

Background: first time a solo performance has been introduced in their Drama studies at school, so plenty of nerves evident! 2-minutes only – keeping it easy to start off with.

Will update as it happens.

Update: Characters:

• Justin Bieber – the ego of the man (boy!) very evident in performance!
• Paris Hilton – accent, long blonde wig(!), lots of hair flicking, ego evident here, too
• Jamie Oliver – nailed his accent (spot on – research evident), cooking class, hands moving everywhere just like Jamie

Class (audience) silent during performances, as requested. Right atmosphere in the room absolutely vital.

Update:

• David Attenborough – accent (of course!) plus the whisper, brief focus loss, hand gestures, very enthralling, drew the audience in
• Oprah Winfrey – performer interacted with the class well as TV show audience, class really felt a part of the performance, HUGE facial expressions, Oprah very excited (about almost everything), research into Oprah’s gestures clearly evident
• Lindsay Lohan – lots of “whatever”, “like…” and “you know….”, recent theft allegations topic of performance
• Michael Jackson – “the” glove, interview-based performance, empathy felt by audience, research evident in student-written script, the importance of getting the subtleties of MJ’s mannerisms and facial expressions became crystal clear
• Raphael Nadal – post match press conference, Spanish accent very good and clearly well-researched, tennis costume complete with oversized headband, very accurate mannerisms and hand movements, tone of voice etc all good

Update:

• Eddie McGuire- local TV personality and football club President – student had line-learning difficulties and chose to perform without script although given option to use it – lesson in focus and how to retrieve lost lines as an actor
• Britney Spears – blonde wig, not enough of Brtiney evident in performance, instead I saw a student in a wig – mannerisms and gestures needed work
• Christina Aguilera – seating position, dialogue, hand gestures all well-researched – Aguilera’s facial expressions needed to be more obvious in order for character to be more convincing – also, emotional side of character needed work – tough call for a 14 year-old, though
• Steve Irwin – focus issues, not deep enough into character, eyes drifting into audience, merely going through lines – all part of the learning process so nothing to worry about

Update:

• Keisha (singer)  – on the tour bus, very well-researched actions & gestures, accurate dialogue and great accent – sounded, looked and behaved like the singer, herself
• Julia Gillard – Australian Prime Minister  -  press conference, more facial expressions needed, too much of the actor evident in performance and not enough character, hand gestures spot on
• Barack Obama – nerves, nerves, nerves – all part of learning to be an actor/Drama student

A lesson in-between coming up to work on Part 2 of the task. This will involve exaggerating all the four expressive skills of voice, movement, facial expressions and gestures in order to satirise or parody the celebrity character. All of these characters have “room to move” in order for the actor to enhance them – either through movement and physical actions and/or verbally (accent, tone etc). Looking forward to Friday’s lesson for the 2nd set of performances – same script, performed differently. These ought to be hilarious. Will live blog again then – Friday 18 february 11.45am AEDT (UTC + 11).

Thought I’d just pop up an informal report on today … a standard day in the life of a high school Drama teacher.

The day began with every one of my Year 12 Drama students attending a Period 1 written examination preparation session at 8.45am. Doesn’t seem too special until you realise they all agreed to come into school (after lessons had concluded for the year) the morning after their Graduation Ceremony. Bleary-eyed as some of them were with only a few hours sleep, you’ve got to be mighty proud of their commitment and discipline. I even scored a lovely gift and card from one of my students.

The next lesson of the day was interesting. With our school preparing to become a laptop school in the near future, the folks at Apple have loaned us a class set of Macbook Pros. One of my Year 8 Drama classes had been chosen to be the class with all the tech gear for the next few weeks. I was looking forward to being able to use the technology, but knew these laptops would arrive at busy time of the year for me. Consequently, I rearranged the next topic on the fly in front of the students, rearranging a costume design assignment into a research assignment on a professional set, costume or lighting designer, with the aim of transferring the information into a small website for each student using iWeb.

Nervously “making it up as I went along”, once the students hit the laptops to do the research, I was really struggling with a way to find an angle that would get this assignment inside a 14-year old girl’s head and make it interesting. Hell, I was embarrassed (with myself!?) that I could only think of one costumer designer off the top of my head (Julie Taymor – The Lion King), so how were my students going to find some? Well, they thought of the angle that I didn’t, of course. The “way in” was to think of a show (usually a musical with this gender and age-bracket) that you have seen and then recall the part you loved the most (set?, costumes?, lighting?), then research the designer for the original or local production and off you go! My lesson went from nowhere to everywhere in 15 minutes! It was like a bullet train and before I could finish a cup of coffee (woops!) I had students quietly discussing with others what they were doing. We had students researching set and costume designers for productions of Mary Poppins, Wicked (a popular choice), Hairspray and many others. Hearing students say “Hey, she’s won a Tony, what the hell’s that?”, cracked me up!

Later in the day I was the victim of severe bullying in the workplace(!). I had clearly left last year’s Year 12 Drama written examination in the tray of the photocopier at work and sure enough, one of my colleagues saw an opportunity. So, at lunchtime I was told I’d left an exam paper on the staff couch and that I’d better check inside. As I openend the exam my “colleague” had gone to the trouble of writing his own questions inside the Drama exam paper, with the real exam cover intact. Here’s a few samples:

Question 1. Stand up and pretend to be a tree (15 marks)

Question 2. Draw a picture of a tree. (15 marks)

Question 3. Make the sound of a tree. (15 marks)

Question 4. Describe what it felt like when you acted like a tree. (15 marks)

OK! So, there’s a theme, here! What sort of respect is that? Those who don’t understand Drama teaching are all jealous, I tell ya. They observe from a distance all the enjoyment we are having in the classroom and … SHOCK! … HORROR! … watch our students learn and have fun in education at the same time! Anyway, it was a joke and I will surely pay my esteemed colleague back when he least expects it before the academic year finishes!

But perhaps the best part of my day was when I chatted to a couple of Year 9 girls I had in Drama last term and you gotta love it when a student tells you, aged 15, she has one goal in high school … to get into a university course where she can study to be a Drama teacher. It makes you proud. Little things like this remind us why we teach Drama … to inspire others in the beauty of our subject/discipline.