Drama Tuesday - Drama Teaching and the School Production

High School production of Les Miserables, 

Evora, Portugal 2017

 Scratch a little below the surface of why young people study drama in schools and almost always they’ll say they do it because they love and want to perform – to be in productions*. The allure of costumes, lights, sets, learning lines, rehearsals, stepping onto the stage in front of an audience, applause. 

I share with students an affinity for the “smell of the greasepaint and roar of the crowd” (as the song goes). Going to a school that did not offer drama as a curriculum subject when the annual production was the only drama opportunity, I grew into a love of drama from that model. But the curriculum (eventually) caught up. Drama became a part of the offerings of schools – though sometimes that is being held onto by our toenails in some schools. For some students (and for some teachers maybe) the focus of drama in the school is less the formal curriculum and more the chance to put on the play or musical. Many schools value the performance for its PR value, for presenting the school in a positive light. According the the gossip, some schools spend huge budgets on these annual extravaganzas. 

What is the role of the school production?

What is the relationship between the drama in the curriculum and the school production?

Don’t get me wrong. There can be many curriculum and co-curricular benefits from a school production. Students learn the discipline of rehearsal, the deferred rewards of working towards a shared goal. They learn about working and learning collaboratively as a member of a team. They work on the nuts and bolts of voice and movement role and characterisation. They learn lines and work on memorisation. The learnt the values of setting personal goals and achieving them. They understand the sense of personal satisfaction of achieving something challenging.

In co-curricular terms, Students from across the years and cliques can be brought together. School identity and cohesion can be fostered (in many of our productions in schools we had students and teachers working alongside each other on stage, sharing dressing rooms and the anguish and pain of learning lines).

But behind the glamour and the sweat, the focus is less on the curriculum content and more on the show. This is not just a problem for the drama teacher. I am reminded of the music students who want only the “glory” of the performance and not the hard slog of so called “classroom music”. 

We cannot overlook the issues that accompany an approach that focuses on a performance-only drama education. Competitive auditioning and casting of favourites; using professionals or outsiders to “bolster” local talent (there is a story going around of the school that spends the equivalent of one year’s teacher salary on hiring professional musicians to “sweeten” the orchestra!); choosing from a limited known repertoire – the crowd pleasers! Censorship. Relentless drilling for perfection. The production as a vehicle for the teacher’s starring role (vanity project 101). The list goes on.

Let’s put the performance schedule of drama in schools in perspective. 

Performance is important in drama education. Gone are the days when the concept of performance in the drama classroom was anathema. Unless we want to return to the days of what I sometimes call Kleenex Tissue Drama – we make drama and then throw it away barely realised, like we do with too many paper hankies!. 

At its heart, drama education is about providing students with opportunities to express ideas and share them – communicate them with and for an audience. To that end, what we do in our drama classes – our class drama – provides the foundations of knowledge and skill for effective performance. 

What is your balance of performance in drama education in schools?