How to Approach Speaking and Listening through Drama

How to Begin with Teacher in Role

Why use teacher in role?

The most important resource you have as a teacher when using drama is yourself. Learning demands intervention from the teacher to structure, direct and influence the learning of the pupils. One of the best ways to do that in drama work is to be inside the drama. Therefore, at the centre of the dramas that we include in this book, is the key teaching technique that is used, namely teacher in role (TiR). This chapter will set out approaches to TiR and give examples of how it works.

Many teachers see TiR as a difficult activity, particularly with older children in the primary school. However, it is our experience that when a teacher takes a role he or she becomes ‘interesting’ to the children, so that there are less control problems because they become engaged. Many times we have watched trainee teachers with a class of children struggling to get attention when giving instructions in traditional teacher mode. Yet, as soon as they move into role, they obtain that attention more effectively.

 For example, a trainee was talking out of role to a class to explain that they were about to meet a girl who was having trouble with her father and needed their help (see ‘The Dream’ drama based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream). The class were calling out and not listening properly. She was talking over them and trying to teach without getting their full attention. Then she explained that they could ask questions of one of the roles from the story and that she was going to become that role when she sat down. She picked up a ribbon with a ring threaded on it and put it round her neck as the role signifier. When she sat down as Hermia, they were focused entirely on her and were listening very closely, putting hands up to ask questions and taking turns in a very orderly way. They were interested in her problem, which was her father’s insistence on deciding whom she should marry. The trainee was not doing anything different apart from using role and committing to it very strongly. She looked far more comfortable.

The trainee was using the simplest form of TiR, hot-seating the role, where the class meets the role sitting in front of them and can ask questions. TiR creates a particular context and can raise the level of commitment and the meaning-making. It can ‘feel real’ even though it is not.

You are not effective as a teacher if you do not at some point engage fully with the drama yourself by using TiR. Remaining as teacher, intervening as teacher, side-coaching, structuring the drama from the outside, and/or sending the class off in groups to create their own drama must at best restrict and at worst negate any opportunity for the teacher to teach effectively. It is far more effective for the teacher to engage with the drama form as artist and be part of the creative act.

It is very useful in a Literacy lesson for the teacher to use roles from the text. The very fact that you take on a key role can provide important ways of defining and exploring the text. How does hot-seating open up the ideas and issues of a story to the children? Let us look more closely at the Hermia role. It can be used with 10- or 11-year-olds as a way of introducing Shakespeare or for other objectives

Teacher as storyteller

 The teacher as a storyteller is something all primary school teachers will recognise. Good teachers slip easily into it and use it frequently. In its most observable guise it occurs when teaching the whole class and engaging them with a piece of fiction. The pupil’s role will be dominated by listening and this will be interlaced with questioning, responding and interpreting the meaning and sense of the fiction. The teacher’s role will be to communicate the text in a lively and interesting manner, holding their attention and engaging their imagination. In making judgements about the quality of this method of teaching, the critical questions will be around whether the content of the story interests the class and holds their attention, whether the delivery of the teacher, i.e. voice, intonation and interpretive skills, are good and, where relevant, whether accompanying illustrations have impact and resonance. For many pupils the times spent listening to their teacher as storyteller will remain as significant moments in their education. The connection between the teacher as storyteller and the teacher using drama, lies in the fact that they both use the generation of imagined realities in order to teach. The relationship between story and drama in education is a complex and dynamic one. It means a known narrative can still be used, the knowledge of the narrative is not a barrier to its usage. However, if the pupils are locked into the original narrative it is problematic. It is the negotiable and dynamic elements of the relationship between drama and narrative that liberate the pupils and the teacher from merely retelling the known story. A class can take part in a drama where all of them know the story, where none of them knows the story, or a mixture of both. As long as some fundamental planning strategies are observed, knowledge of the story is not a barrier to participation. Broadly these pre-requisites are: 1 An awareness of those elements of the story that will not be changed – and agreements about these must be made with the class at the beginning or during the drama, in other words, the non-negotiable elements of the narrative. 2 A willingness to move away from the fixed narrative to an exploration of the narrative. The use of drama strategies to explore events and their consequences, to look at alternatives and test them. In these periods the class develop hypotheses, test them and reflect upon them. 3 If narrative consists of roles, fictional contexts, the use of symbols and events then the teacher needs to hold some of those elements true and consistent with the story so far. For example, roles and contexts may already be decided but new events may be introduced, the delivery of a letter, for example. How the class respond to this event is not known and it is at this point that they become the writers of the narrative.

Preparation for the role

In preparing to be this kind of storyteller the teacher must have made particular decisions about this child, Begin by asking the class out of role what they want to ask the child and the order of those questions. This not only provides the teacher with some security in knowing what is going to be asked, at least initially, but also allows some minutes to refine the planning.

Before the drama session, decide what attitude you are going to take when questioned by the class. You are going to be telling them a story but it will be as if they had just met you and it will not be the voice of the narrator re-telling someone else’s story but in the present tense as if it is happening now. This interactive storytelling has an immediacy and urgency and is working at a different level of discourse from the read story, and yet it is still storytelling.

Moving in and out of role – managing the drama and reflecting on it

We are describing using role as ‘teaching from within’ because the teacher enters the drama world, but it is very important to step out of the fiction often and not let it run away with itself. When using TiR, the teacher is operating as a manager as well as participant and must spend as much time stopping the drama and moving out of role (OoR) to reflect on what is happening and give the pupils a chance to think through what they know and what they want to do. 

In effective drama, children can actually feel the ‘as if’ world as real at certain points. The teacher must make sure that if the drama does engage in that way, the pupils know it is a fiction at all times, especially by stopping and coming out of role frequently. The relationship developed by the teacher with the class is dependent on the movement between these two worlds. TiR changes the nature of the contract entered into by the class. What is that contract? It is ‘the imaginative contract’:

● It is not, I will teach you by telling you what you need to know – the style of much classroom teaching.

● It is not, I will present a play before you and you will watch me, as the actor contracts with an audience.

● It is not, Listen and I will tell you a story. It is my story and you must not interrupt it.

● It is, You will become a playmaker, an author with me and will be a part of the story that I start and we create together. The result is to make the creative community.

The requirements of working in role

In order to make the TiR most effective, we need to look at educational drama from the point of view of the ‘audience’, an audience who in this instance are participants at the same time. In drama the pupils are making sense actively, knowing their meaning can be acted upon. You’re asking a very complex thing of the group of children. They have to switch from operating as audience to participant and back again often and suddenly. This is why this sort of whole group drama has so much learning potential. It involves the ‘audience’ in the process of the play-making, at the same time providing the teacher with ways of influencing directly the situation and the meanings, an example of responding to the critical incident occurred in a session on the drama based on macbeth.

Disturbing the class productively

The teacher’s function is to provide challenge and stimulus, to give problems and issues for the class to have to deal with. The drama is developed through a set of activities that build the class role, which is usually a corporate role, we have to help them into the drama, making them comfortable, and then disturb that comfort productively. In setting up the drama we are doing what Heathcote calls ‘trapping within a life situation.

The result of constructing the situation thus is that they can then discover what it all means. If pupils acquire knowledge and understanding by working for it, stumbling upon it or having it sprung upon them such that their expectations are challenged, their learning experiences will be more dynamic than simply being told. An example of this occurs in ‘The Governor’s Child’, a drama based on Brecht’s Caucasian Chalk Circle. The class are in role as a village community helping a woman with a baby, who, unbeknownst to them, has fled a revolution.

The teacher–taught relationship

In all teaching situations there exists a power relationship between the learners and the teacher. Of course, it does not look like this when the class are responding and contracting into the tasks set by the teacher but should some or all decide not to, the cohesion can be broken. In drama this power relationship is made overt. We must start from the point of view that if the class do not want the drama to work then it will not.

The nature of drama makes the interest level a dynamic and flexible dimension. The pupils will, to a cer- tain extent, define a level of interest in a drama by focusing upon the issues that interest them. In the classroom, the pupils enter into an agreement with you the teacher that you are in charge. This may be a tacit agreement, it may depend upon many factors but in it the teacher is in charge and there are certain rights and privileges attached to your role.

The power relationship is asymmetric. Of course, in drama we have the possibility of shifting the power when we are inside the fiction because we may choose a role that has low status and has little power. This shift in status and power is very engaging for pupils. It can result in a different kind of dialogue from the usual teacher/pupil one and this can be very attractive to pupils.

So what are the possibilities in terms of power and choosing a role? There are five basic types of role and mostly can be illustrated from the ‘The Dream’ drama. The authority role This is a role like the Duke in the ‘The Dream’ drama, who is presented with Egeus’s problem and has to rule on it. This figure is usu- ally in charge of an organisation and has the class in a role subordinate to him/her. The role is fair, applies rules and governs properly, but often does not know the full facts and issues and needs the class to investigate and enlighten him/her.

The authority role This is a role like the Duke in the ‘The Dream’ drama, who is presented with Egeus’s problem and has to rule on it. This figure is usually in charge of an organisation and has the class in a role subordinate to him/her. The role is fair, applies rules and governs properly, but often does not know the full facts and issues and needs the class to investigate and enlighten him/her. It is very close to being teacher and can be reassuring for a class, but also has the negativity of not changing the teacher–taught relationship enough to allow more ownership for the class.

The opposer role This is a role that is often in authority but dangerous to and/or creating a problem for another role and, by extension, the class. Egeus is an opposer role who is against Hermia and therefore in opposition to the class role, as they take her side against his dictatorial treatment of her. This is a stimulating position for many pupils as the opposition of parents is something they have all experienced. The opposer role has to be used carefully because the response to it can be difficult to handle if it becomes too strong. We have to know what response to expect and be able to channel it productively.

The intermediate role This is often a messenger or go-between, as the servant role used in the ‘The Dream’ drama. This role is then caught between opposing sides and can appeal to the empathy in the class to help them out of the predicament. In the ‘The Dream’ it might be a servant to Egeus who is sympathetic to Hermia but does not know what best to do as she cannot just tell her employer what she thinks he should do. So she seeks the help of the class to solve her dilemma.

The needing help role This is a role like Hermia, who is in need of help to fight the injustice of her father’s decision. This role, like the servant described above, is the best way to get empathy from a class and most raises the status of the class, putting them in a position of responsibility and thus generating interest and learning possibility because the teacher is the one who does not know what to do for once.

The ordinary person This role is in the same position as the role given to the class. We do not have this sort of role in our ‘The Dream’ drama but the Steward in the ‘Macbeth’ drama is like this. He faces the same problem and danger as the other servants represented by the class. Even though he is in charge of them, he needs them to sort it out for him and make decisions. Therefore this is a lower status role, the teacher being ‘the one who does not know’, a very powerful position of ignorance that teachers cannot ordinarily occupy. It is powerful because it shifts responsibility more to the pupil roles. The three low status roles present more possibilities for the pupils’ learning because the teacher–pupil power relationship is shifted and they have a semblance of power. We say ‘semblance’ because the pupil power only lies within the fiction and, as always, the teacher is running the class and can come out of role at any time to assume control. ‘Semblance’ is not a pejorative word here. It does mean a shift of some power, but not a takeover of power. In a fiction what seems to be the truth is as powerful as if it were real.