The World’s a Stage, But Are We All Players? Getting students in the lit classroom to warm up to drama
I’m not a theater teacher, so even though I have a long history of being on the stage as a performer, tackling drama in my literature courses can sometimes be daunting. Students will frequently shirk from requests for volunteers to read roles, or feel intimidated when it comes to trying to perform any passages for the class. And, even though I admit to them that our literature class is not an acting class, I also emphasize the fact that drama is not meant to be merely read; it is meant to be performed!
So, the question then becomes: how can I get my students to loosen up and engage with their more theatrical sides when reading drama?
Perhaps one of the most effective strategies I have used in my classroom is going through a quick drama game/warm-up before each class reading of a scene. Using warm-ups is something many of us educators do frequently in our classes, and the benefits are well-known. There are also many resources out there with comprehensive lists of drama games that can be implemented into class, like this one from Dramatoolkit. Here are some of my reflections on why drama games have been successful strategies in my lit classroom, and how I have been able to use them to enhance my class study of drama.
Warm-ups take little to no time. Usually, there is a lot I want to get through in my class, including reading the scene(s), reflecting on the reading, and transferring that reflection to other tasks, concepts, etc, so I don’t always have the luxury of taking 10 minutes just to warm up. Luckily, there are many warm-ups that are effective and take only a minute to do, such as Greetings or Gift-Giving.
You can scaffold the warm-ups according to student comfort. If this is the first time I am working on drama with a class, the students may be particularly shy or hesitant to take risks in performance, so I may begin with warm-ups that are partner-based first, then gradually go up to full-class warm-ups, so students can feel comfortable being theatrical in front of others more gradually.
It gets the students laughing and moving. If we are about to sit down and read for 20 minutes, I want my students to try and retain the physical nature of reading drama as much as possible, and by beginning the class with movement, I see this retention happening more often. Also, these drama games are simply fun, so the students sit down to engage with the scene with smiles on their faces, already enjoying themselves, and this positive attitude transfers to their reading.
The warm-up can be designed to prime the students to engage with specific content/analysis of the reading. This is perhaps one of my favorite effects of using drama games to warm up with the class. If I know there is a specific element we will be analyzing/considering in that day’s scene, I may intentionally choose a warm-up that will get them thinking about that element. For example, if we are going to be reading the scene in Julius Caesar where Marc Antony gives his famous funeral speech, we may do a warm-up of Toss the Word by tossing the word “honorable.” Then, when we get to that speech, the students will pick up on the fact that the word is being repeated over and over, but with implications concerning tone, etc, and usually I don’t even need to point this out! Another favorite is to do Wink Murder before reading the final scene of any Shakespearean tragedy to get the students primed to consider how a death may look on stage, even if the stage directions are minimal. I feel rewarded seeing how these games get the creative juices flowing and help the students be more autonomous in noticing what is happening in the scene.
It is my hope that my students engage with drama in a way that shows they truly understand and appreciate what the genre offers that other genres simply cannot, and performance is a key element to move toward that understanding and appreciation. And the icing on this cake is that these warm-ups make the class more fun, get the students to take more risks, and get them reflecting on their reading. Hats off to all the theater teachers out there who have given me these tools to make my literature class more successful!
