STORY RESPONSE THROUGH DRAMA
April 2000	Back to Pedagogical Profiles

By Leigh Bulmer, M.A. (Drama Therapy in progress), B.Ed (TESL)

Hey! Welcome to drama in the classroom. Using drama as a tool to explore literature provides a very exciting and rewarding experience for both student and teacher.The goal of this site is to keep you informed about the possibilities of incorporating drama into your curriculum. My first objective is to let you know that we do NOT have to only experience stories through talking and reading. The story experience is multi-sensory and much more can be learned and appreciated if we literally stop and smell the roses.

Story as a Dramatic Experience: Why do it?

With today's rapid-fire exposure to the media, children don't get a chance to slow down and acknowledge what they are seeing and how it influences them. Drama and the arts in general require students to stop, think, and feel. By acting out a scene, telling a story, or creating a puppet, students HAVE to consider many different options and interpretations.

Louise Rosenblatt (1978), one of the gurus of reader response, indicates that aesthetic reading occurs when the reader's attention is centered directly on what he or she is living through during his or her relationship with the text (p. 25). For example, when students read Charlotte's Web by E.B. White, they are living through (feeling, seeing, etc) the events on the farm. This same process occurs when students enact a scene from a story. They live through it. The only difference is instead of being a private mental experience it is a shared one.

When students are given the opportunity to perform a segment of a story, they externalize their impressions of the story events. Enacting a story fills in the gaps, such as how the character is dressed, how she moves, how she speaks, etc. When students work together to act out a scene they must negotiate their various interpretations. This process brings to light that each student has their own valid way of viewing the story; this is one of the fundamental goals of response.

There are various ways of responding to a story. J.A. Appleyard (1990) suggests that there are various roles that readers can assume when responding to a text. One of the roles he calls "Reader as Player". In this role the reader inhabits the story becoming the various characters. He describes this as the earliest response stage that is readily engaged in by young children. The children do not simply imagine the story; they put themselves in the roles of the characters. This is a very active and participatory stage that unfortunately is often too short lived and undervalued.

Let me focus on this first role "Reader as Player" as this is the role that I feel is the most relevant to drama. Providing students with time to inhabit the text allows them to really appreciate (with all their senses) what the story experience was about. This awareness is facilitated by guided questions from the teacher. For example, I interview the child while they are in character (Excuse me Mr. Wolf, why are you trying to blow that piggy's house down?). This permits children to explore issues without owning them, that is, Mr. Wolf is bad but the child is not. Story response is not only limited to the answers to verbal questions. It includes how the child physically represents the character. Is the character played in a timid and shy way or is it bold and aggressive? Sometimes all a child needs to do, at this early age, is to physically experience the character. I have watched children delight in the opportunity to become as tall as a tree, as strong as a bear, or as free as a butterfly. How the child represents him or herself physically and emotionally in the drama is important information to his or her development.

In her book, Playtherapy with Children: A Practitioner's Guide, Sue Jennings (1993) describes her developmental paradigm involving embodiment, projection, and role play. She calls it the EPR method.

Embodiment encompasses explorations made through the body via the senses. It involves activities such as rolling, crawling, touching various media such as putty, water, or sand, games, of peek-a-boo, and making rhythmic movements and sounds. These actions are very important as they teach the child to have control over his or her body, which instills confidence.

Projection involves placing experiences, feelings, thoughts, and wishes onto toys, pictures, stories, and other various sorts of media. The objects take on roles and relationships that the child deems important and worthy of exploration. They are a way that children can explore experiences within the safety of the story. Environments that can be used for story creation are sand tray, play doh, small figurines/toys, drawing picture, telling a story, and puppets.

Role-play is the embodiment of a character by the child. During role-play the children as characters interact with each other. Children can role-play within the context of an enactment or a game.

References:
Appleyard, A.J. (1990) Becoming a Reader: The Experience of Fiction from Childhood to Adulthood. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Jennings,S. (1993) Playtherapy with Children: A Practitioner's Guide. Oxford: Blackwell Scientific Publications.
Rosenblatt, L. (1978) The Reader, the Text, the Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work. Carbondale, Ill: Southern Illinois University Press.

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