I went to the children’s drama workshop one Tuesday afternoon as a volunteer, to see what it was all about. I didn’t know what I was getting myself in for, after all it’s been a while since I was that age. I'm a young adult now but an 'old' woman to them, one of the boys said I even looked like a 'Mammy' because I wore boots and have 'big clown feet'. I forgot how upfront kids can be. The boys are as loud as ever running around the girls pointing their arms and fingers into machine guns and shooting them while shouting out Terminator and Die Hard lines. The girls roll their eyes and tut, tut to each other. Everything about this class is so familiar and I can't help but get sentimental, after all I haven’t thought about my primary school days at all till now but it was easy to get lost in the acting and blend in with them all.
photo by Anna O'Neill
After the first few minutes when everyone is coming in and catching up with each other, the games begin. Warm up exercises get them running around and obeying the tutors Simon Says requests. They have so much fun with this one. Then it's to the acting part and improvisation. They are currently working on a play, a new version of the three little pigs, and were asked to make up a different story around the original, so the group I was helping decided to turn it around and make three wolves as the good ones and the three little pigs as the bad ones. The boys called the main villain pig Thierry Henry, and were consumed with anger while acting this pig out. I don't think I've ever seen anything so funny. Again the girls were saying 'get over it' and rolled their eyes.
The point of these exercises is that the children gain confidence and work together coming up with a cute play to act out at the end of term, though with all the different personalities going around it's hard to pinpoint just one main idea. Boys do love their action and well, it's a bit hard to tell a nice fairy tale story with 'arghs', 'bangs' and 'pows', unless its Pirates of the Caribbean. Drama is the place where children can be themselves and are encouraged to act and use their imagination. It's a major social event for the young ones and they learn the skill of group work. The kids love it. Each drama class may very well hold a future theatre or film star you never know? And who wouldn't want to encourage that!? But if you asked the kids what they thought about drama, I think they'd say it's so much fun and a great way to be themselves |