Use of process

drama
techniques
during story
telling
PROCESS DRAMA
 Process drama is a method of teaching and learning where
both the students and teacher are working in and out of role.
For example, a teacher might work in role as the Pied Piper
leading the rats (performed by the children in role) to their
deaths. Or they might lead a whole group meeting on, for
example, discussions about building a new motorway
through a village.

 As a teaching methodology, process drama developed

primarily from the work of Brian Way, Dorothy Heathcote,
Cecily O’Neill and Gavin Bolton and other leading drama
practitioners.
•Process drama is not about creating a ’product’, i.e. it doesn’t have the
end result of a play or a performance, it is about defining and creating a
role and going through a ‘process’ of thinking and responding in that
role.

•Process drama is unscripted although there is an amount of planning,

agreement and preparation which happens in advance of the drama.

• The drama itself is improvised and usually spontaneous, with the

teacher setting the boundaries and expectations for each process drama
experience.

•Usually the teacher works in role to establish and maintain the drama!
Working in role enables the teacher to move the drama forward by
questioning, challenging, organising thoughts, responding, involving
students and managing difficulties.
Drama Strategies-
Role Play
 Helps children develop a more sensitive
understanding of contrasting viewpoints.
 They can step into the past or future and travel to

any location dealing with issues on emotional, moral

and intellectual levels.
 Individual, Pairs, Groups
 It is a progression into groups
 Spend time in preparatory discussion
 Collective role-many playing the same role

Teacher in role
 Need to subtly change your tone of voice and body

language to communicate key attitudes, emotions

and view points.
 High status-but will be inhibiting to students.
 Equal status-fellow villager ,

explorer. Same predicament

but can guide by asking questions.
 Low status-someone in need

of help or guidance. children

become an expert role.
 Use a piece of prop or costume.
 Full costume not necessary.
 Hats, bags, shawls,scarves, walking

sticks, umbrellas
 Can play any character not necessary human

fantasy, alien ,monster ,animal.

 Can be individual or with the students.
 Engage the attention of the class by talking to

them in character and asking them to guess.

Hot Seating
 The person on the hot seat
answers questions in role about
the background behavior and
motivation of a character.
 Used to check level of
understanding of a particular
character or subject.
 Can be also done in pairs and
groups.
 Its basically an interview.
Examples
 Personal and Social education-Following
group improvisation about a bullying
incident, the bully, the witnesses and the
bully’s friends can be hot seated after they
explore their feelings about what they did
and whether they can learn to behave
differently.
Telephone Conversations

 Pupils speak in role as if having

a conversation on the phone.
 Can be one sided.

Literacy
 Two story characters gossip about another

character on the telephone.

 Giving or receiving good or bad news.
Meetings

 An improved gathering held in role to discuss

views about a problem and how it can be
resolved.
 In the pied piper of Hamelin, the townspeople

meet to discuss what to do about the rats.

 In Romeo and Juliet the Capulet's have a

meeting to discus what to do about the

Montague.
Visualization

 Students close their eyes to visualize images, stories and places

while listening to narration, storytelling, poetry or music.
 Narrate a journey on a magic carpet that flies the children to
another country. It could take them to different regions so that
they imagine mountains, rivers, seas, vegetation and so on.
 Make children listen to poems and Shakespeare with their eyes
closed.
 Imagine it’s a hot day. You are sitting on the ground with a huge
crowd. There is not much place and you are try to shelter your
face from the hot sun with your hand. You can hear Gandhiji but
are not sure of what exactly he is saying. You are undecided
whether to move ahead to hear better or sit where you are.
Ten Second Objects
 Groups of students use their bodies to quickly
make an overall physical shape.
 Ten second objects help children to work

instinctively, cooperatively and creatively while

developing physical awareness.
 Divide the classroom into small groups of

around 4-6 students.

 When you call out the name of an object all the

groups have to make its shape out of their own

bodies, joining together in different ways while
you count down slowly from ten to zero. Usually
every group will find a different way of forming
the object.
Examples
 A tornado, a volcano, a mountain rescue scene, a road sign, The
Taj Mahal, The Eiffel Tower, the Great Pyramid or any famous
landmark, The London or New York Skyline.
 A dinosaur, a ammonite, Stonehenge, The Coliseum, A Viking
longship, A medieval castle, Victorian inventions and toys, A
World War II gas mask, a Doodlebug, an item sent during a recent
trip to the museum.
 Spell words with everybody making the shape of a different letter.
 Snowflakes and crystal patterns.
 An octopus, a scorpion, a bird’s nest.
 Bridge structures, levers and pulleys.
 Parts of the body.
 A light bulb.
 An object related to air resistance such as feather or parachute.
 Something made of ice[ then ask them to melt ].
Speaking Objects
 Students make the shape of objects and speak
aloud what they might be observing or feeling.
 Speaking as an object enables students to gain a

deeper understanding of a situation, character or

object by seeing it from an unusual viewpoint.
 If working in pairs and small groups, students

can be related objects-such as a pair of shoes or

a box of toys.
 Students can become speaking objects to show
their understanding of a story, to comment on
events and characters or to take the drama
forward. For example, they can be household
objects discussing what they think of Cinderella
and her sisters, forest plants and animals in the
Gruffalo or the bridge in the Three Billy Goats
Gruff.
 A pencil or book explains what it feels to be

dropped on the floor or to be forgotten.

 Pupils play different types of food in a

supermarket with each one trying to persuade

the teacher that they are either the tastiest or
healthiest or both.
Decision Making Strategies

 Conscience Alley{Decision Alley/ Thought Tunnel}

 A character walks down an alleyway formed by members of

the class as they use persuasive arguments to help make a

decision.
 Conscience alley can be used to explore any dilemma faced

by a character. It encourages pupils to consider a decisive

moment in detail by presenting and listening to
contrasting opinions and helps to improve vocabulary and
reasoning skills.
 The class should form two equal lines facing each other, a

couple of metres apart. One person takes the role of the

character making the decision and slowly walks between
the lines as the “persuaders "whisper or speak their advice.
 Red Riding Hood is deciding whether to speak
with the wolf.
 Romeo is deciding whether to fight with Tybalt.
 You have seen your best friend cheating in a test.

What should you do?

 You joined with some bullying and now you feel

guilty. What can you do?

 Your friends steal some toys from a shop while

you are with them.

 Your friends want you to prove how brave you are

by walking along a high wall.

Improvisation

 Improvisation is the spontaneous performance of a

scene or story.
 Working in groups requires some initial discussion

and negotiation to allocate roles and ensure mutual

understanding of the aims.
 However pupils should be encouraged to actively

try out their ideas.

 It may not be difficult to start an improvisation but

knowing how to finish can be harder.

 Remind children about stories having a beginning,

middle and end-and give them a time limit.

Small Group Improvisations
TITLE - IT'S BEYOND A JOKE!
 Specific Directives

 (a) Comedy.

 (b) Staff cafeteria.

 (c) Erratic behaviour of drink-dispensing machine

creates havoc.
 Suggestions

 (a) Characters of varying ages and experience.

 (b) All characters are affected by machine's behaviour, in

different ways.
 This should provide the comic aspects of the

improvisation.
 (c) Out of this comic chaos, one character emerges as

the leader and

 resolves the problem successfully.
Examples
 Create an improvisation predicting what will
happen next in story.
 Devise parallel scenes that could have taken

place while the main story was happening.

 Continuing an improvisation from a starting

sentence such as ‘’Haven’t I seen you somewhere

before? or Quick, hide, somebody’s coming.
 Devise a short TV commercial related to a topic

including a jingle and catchphrase, for example

‘’Come to Ancient Egypt for the holiday of
lifetime”.
.
Ritual
 A specially devised sequence of words and movements or to
mark an important point in a drama.
 Rituals can be used to deepen belief in drama or to a mark an
important moment.
 Ritual can include actions, words, chants, sounds, and sung
phrases. Encourage children to put forward ideas-a ritual
devised using their suggestions is more likely to be
remembered.
 A ritual can be used to open a meeting or to create a protocol
for taking turns to speak.
 Members of a group in a drama may like to devise their own
greeting ceremony.
 Entering and leaving a make-believe world: Baldwin suggest
creating a ritual with younger children as a way of starting a
whole class drama such as everyone sprinkling ‘’story dust’’
on their head and repeating special words and actions.
Living Newspaper
 A thematic approach for linking and presenting a
montage of students’ work using a range of drama
strategies.
 Explain the class are going to produce a living
newspaper that will be seen and heard rather than read.
 You may wish to nominate an editor or editorial team for
groups to submit their ideas to.
 Groups should choose headlines, which can be narrated
or perhaps spoken one word at a time around the
group.
 Many drama strategies lead themselves to this approach.
Still images and tableaux can be used for photos, Hot
seating for interviews, narration for parts of articles as
well as mime and improvised scenes.
Examples
 Students make a living newspaper about events
that occur locally or worldwide, such as human
rights or environmental issues.
 News, reports and views from another country or

the local area.

 Pairs or small groups can develop presentations

summarizing aspects of a lesson or highlights of

the week including human-interest and lessons
learned.
Soundscape
 Students create the atmosphere of a scene or
environment by making appropriate sounds with
their bodies and voices. Musical instruments,
physical objects and recordings can also be used.
 Select a theme such as the seaside, a city or a jungle.

Sit the pupils in a group and ask them for examples

of sounds that might be heard in this environment.
Explain that the group is going to create a picture
using sound-using their voices (and body percussion
if appropriate!)The teacher acts as conductor. The
conductor controls the overall shape of the
soundscape by raising her hand to increase the
volume or bringing it to touch the floor for silence.
Examples
 Develop soundscapes based on pictures in a
storybook you are reading. Encourage the
children to look carefully at each picture to find
as many sounds as they can. Then when you tell
the story the children can make the sounds as
you them the picture.
 Give groups a selection of objects like paper

cups,water,coins,twigs and stones.Can they

make their own sound story using these?
 Create a soundscape of a haunted house to lead

into poetry or story writing.