1st Activity
We did story making today. A story will be started by one of us and each of us will have to continue the story by giving a sentence. Then, by adding one layer, we had to make the story go bizarre and weird. And when we did that, we felt weird and confused. It was not coherent and we were confused because the direction was not clear. I felt like it went this way, but it went that way. So when it comes to my turn, I was lost. The flow was not there. It was 'un' logical.
Another reason why it did not have any flow was because it lacked structure. CK taught us that our story needed a structure, which has a nice beginning, a climax and nice ending. This can be useful to be taught in English lesson, Essay writing. Some sentences for us to have a nice structure:
1. Once upon a time, (Setting: Who, Where, When)
2. Everyday... (Routine)
3. One Day... (Conflict)
4. Because...
5. Because of this...
6. Happy ending
We tried it again and we could do a nice ending to it, where initially we could not.
Adding another layer, a new challenge. This time round, we had to talk in Gibberish language to communicate, try continuing the storyline by making the next person understand. A genre was given as well. We did not know how but I used symbols, signs and expressions to do it. It was successful. It was really funny to watch how people respond and react to it and how they try their best to convey the message.
Strengths and Weaknesses
This story making activity opens up the possibilities where we can let our imagination be activated and create something on the spot. It is somewhat improvisation where we spontaneously think and make meaning to the story. One bad side to it is when our imagination runs wild and goes to the wilder side, eg, sexual stuff or vulgarity, which we do not want our students to think about. So I think it is very important that we should enforce some rules like, 'No vulgarities', etc. Apparently, we encountered a condom in this storymaking and we did not know how to continue the story, hence, the flow was affected. It may create awkwardness and also lead other students to think towards that direction, which we teachers do not want in Drama classes.
Gibberish language was a great way that pushes boundaries. Communication can be classified into verbal and nonverbal communication. Besides speaking in a language that we can understand, we find other means to communicate our ideas with each other, for eg. facial, gestures etc. However, Mead stated(as cited in Jones & LeBaron) that 'members of cultures derive meaning from facial expressions by relating them to the context in which they occur, including both verbal and non- verbal behaviors' (Pg 500). Hence, it might be difficult to understand one's nonverbal gestures as one gesture might mean something but might mean something else to another. Different cultural or home upbringing will affect our understanding of nonverbal communication. But this is where it gets interesting when students find the challenge to make others understand by trying different sorts of gestures and expressions. Their vocabulary of expressions will expand.
We went on to do construct a workshop for forum theatre in our scenes that we worked with.
2nd Activity - Workshop Constructing
We discussed issues that arises from our scenes. We thought about what issues we can bring out, characters that we want to focus, message that we want to bring across and then devise these issues again through forum theatre.
Forum theatre creates a safe space for us educators and students to express these issues out into the open without any feeling of discomfort, awkwardness or even with a sense of guilt. It brings the issues up front and allows us to deal with it in a sensible, intellectual and sensitive way. Osterman and Kottkamp (1993) describe reflective practice as a learning process where now that they (students) are 'motivated by an awareness of a problem, the learner uses new information to develop alternate theories that are more useful in explaining the relationship between actions and outcomes and to begin the search for strategies that are more consistent with espoused theories and more effective in acheiving intended outcomes.' (Pg 3) It is through forum theatre that reflective practice can occur, where issues that are identified are brought forward and allowed to be dealt with through re-enacting, devising our ideas and transmitting our thoughts across the media (drama conventions).
Our scene : Home scene with parents, Boy and maid.
Decided to focus on the issue on how employers treat their maids. Then we present maid being abuse by the mum. We decided to take out dad because it is no use if he supports the antagonist. It would be good if we introduce a third party, which is outside of this family. So we decided to replace the dad with Mum's friend. She would then be the person, who the audience might want to re-enact, to negotiate and change the situation at home. We had to find a pivotal point in our scene which we can freeze and allow audience to be involve. So we made a conflict where the mum abuses the maid for not taking care of her boy.
What would the mum's friend do? Should she do something to prevent the abuse? If she does agree to the abuse, how do the situation go from there? As facilitators, we had to think on the spot as well and see how it goes.
Through this, forum theatre opens up a variety of possibilities where we experiment and learn through experience.
Bibliography
Jones, S. & LeBaron, D.(2002). Research on the Relationship Between Verbal and Nonverbal Communication: Emerging Integrations. Journal of Communication. Retrieved from http://talkbank.org/media/PDF/JOC-PDF/1-Jones%20%26%20LeBaron.pdf
Osterman, K. & Kottkamp, R. (1993) Reflective Practice for Educators: Improving Schooling Through Professional Development. California: Corwin Press.
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