Journal Reflection 8(11/10/12)

 Lesson 8 (12/10/12)

NADIRAH 

Did a process drama and forum theatre

Pre-activity: Sing a rhyme or childhood tune in mother tongue language with actions.

Script: Nadirah

Five groups

1 group will be acting out Nadirah scene 8. Scene 8 is about a dialogue/debate between the mother, Sahirah, and the daughter, Nadirah on religious issues and civil marriage.

1^st activity

4 groups to focus on four questions on Nadirah (2 groups) and Sahirah (2 groups):

1.     Who is Nadirah?

- Nadirah is a child of Sahirah. She is friend of Farouk and is involved in a Malay organization in school. She studies Madrasah and is a devout Muslim. Her father is living in KL.

2.     What does she want?

- She objected civil marriage. She wanted her mum to take part in religious acitivities with her and become a devout Muslim. She did not want Robert to convert her mum into a Christian. She wanted her mum to talk to Farouk. She wanted to go to Heaven with her mum. She wanted to go to KL.

3.     What is in her way?

-       Robert

-       Beliefs and religions

-       Different perspectives of religions and beliefs

4.     What else can she do?

-       Bring Farouk to her house to talk to mum

-       Talk to Robert and settle the issue

-       Commit suicide

2nd activity : Game using Forum theatre

Each nadirah and Shahirah from each one group, to come up and have a battle of who will win the argument base on their wants and objectives. Allowed to have 2 substitutes and one break.

At first it was between Nadirah and Annie. The argument was casual talk. They had pointers in mind that started the tension going. It escalated until Asli came to take over Nadirah. Carmen then became Nadirah. The argument between Carmen and Asli became so bad that emotions were involved.

My thoughts

I feel that the questions that we did in the first activity provides a strong basis for the 2^ndactivity. By knowing the wants and desires of the characters, we understand the character’s personality and circumstances. It then helps us to formulate our concepts and strategies while we prepare for the ‘battle’. When we understand the character’s difficult situation and their desires, we are able to forum and able to role-play better. Therefore, I think the first activity is a very good activity to know our characters well and in-depth. We could even extend this activity with more process drama conventions such as hotseatting, conscience alley, mantle of the expert, etc.

Role-playing is a tool that I feel that drama teachers should use in their drama process because it enables the students to think and react as they are in their character base on the plot of the story. It also requires them discover ways of reacting and how they deal with the situations, given the circumstances (Social, economical, financial) Here, empathy, personal and social development takes place.

It is then important that we, as facilitators, must know our own agenda and objectives of doing forum theatre and process drama. What is the objective of forming this issue? What do you hope to achieve? What do you hope your students will gain from it? What do we want as a facilitator for ourselves and for the students and the community? The rules may be tweaked to suit according to the plot, issues and student’s ability, environmental and social factors so that agenda and objectives will work. For example, in this Nadirah play, we can make it as a game because the plot and circumstances are already presented and the issues are already present. Issues and focus are already set. Whereas in newspaper articles, we need to find out the issues and focus of the problem. We can branch out to many factors and causes due to the problems. So, in the first lesson on the newspaper of the Boy’s haircut, it was harder to tweak the rules and make it as a game. What I meant by game is the tweaking of rules in forum theatre. In this case of Nadirah, the CK was able to make the rules flexible by having it like a fighting ring by using 2 or 3 substitutes to continue the tension. Normally in the forum theatre, there are normally no substitutes. Once a person comes up to forum a play, the person normally takes it through without any substitute unless someone wants to intervene.

The heated argument between Carmen and Asli was very intense. I felt that it is important that the teacher takes care of the student's well being while playing in role for their characters. They can get quite emotionally affected and even emotionally attached to it after the process of drama. It is important that we do not want our students to feel hatred, sad or fearful after the process because it is not our objective.

Reading on Bowell and Heap – Principles of Planning for process drama

This chapter 2 of this book talks about the principles of process drama that will help to develop students personally and socially on a social context. In process drama, everyone is engaged even as an audience. It is always questioning, discovering and exploring in that moment and not based on memory. The facilitator then helps students to make connection and links to the subject matter by participating and reflecting.

According to Bowell & Heap (2001), ‘learning takes place most effectively when it is contextualized; that learners who have a sense of ownership about their learning have a greater commitment to it and therefore gain more from it as a result and that, universally, human beings use drama to symbolically represent life experiences and to make comment on them’ (Pg 8-9)Hence they came up with the 4 cornerstones of process drama, which are play, learning in context, owning the learning and symbolic representation of experience. The teacher’s task is to scaffold it according to the elments of drama which are time, space, focus, role, tension, metaphor, symbol, contrast. They should take one level at a time, building on layers, keeping in mind their objectives and agenda. Therefore, careful planning is required.

Bibliography

Bowell, P. & Heap, B. (2002). Distilling the Principles of Planning for Process Drama. Great Britain: David Fulton Publishers.