Drama Strategy: Drama for Oracy

Talk in schools has been referred to in many ways, for example oracy, speaking and listening, spoken language, spoken communication. Whatever we call it, drama strategies have much to offer.

Professor Robin Alexander (2017) recognises the unique contribution drama makes to oracy:

‘Children's capacities to use talk to reason, argue, explain, explore, justify, challenge, question, negotiate, speculate, imagine, evaluate, and in these and other ways to take ownership of their talking and thinking rather than merely answer someone else's usually closed questions. Such talk, unusual in the teaching of mainstream subjects, is actually not unlike that habitually deployed and encouraged in performance arts, for example in the kind of discussion that might be generated to support and explore improvised drama.’

Drama is emotionally engaging, stimulates talk and provides students with context-based opportunities to practise and gain confidence as speakers. Drama can motivate verbal reasoning, argument, debate, questioning, negotiation, speculation, imagination and evaluation, (in and out of role).

Drama strategies have different talk protocols, for example, eavesdropping and conscience alley allow students to speak when the listener passes by, whereas improvisation and voice collage allow students to decide whether and when to speak. Different strategies enable students to talk in groups of different sizes and constitutions.

Drama can stimulate and require different types of talk, for example a marketplace (informal talk), a court (formal talk and rigid turn-taking), Mantle of the Expert (talking professionally to clients, in task/work related situations).

Teachers in role model appropriate ways of talking and responding and can raise levels of linguistic expectation and challenge.

Several drama strategy names suggest speaking and/or listening, for example: rumours, voice collage, eavesdropping, talking objects. However, most drama strategies can be used flexibly, to stimulate and develop different types of talk. They can operate as talk frames in drama and within other subjects. Teachers can change their instructions, to alter the oracy demands.

Hot seating

Instead of inviting spontaneous questions for the character, the teacher could first say:

‘Get with a partner (or in groups of 3 or 4). Everyone suggest one question that their group could ask the character. Then each group decides which single question it will ask and why.’

Conscience alley

A character moves between two lines. Each person in the opposing lines tries to persuade the character to take (or not take) a particular course of action. The teacher could ask them to use the word because, to reason and justify what they say to the character.

Collective role

When several students are simultaneously in role as one character, they need to listen to each other, to ensure they sound consistently like the same character speaking. If two collective roles are talking with each other, this can lead to discussion, debate and/or an argument.

The teacher could gather and display sentence openings for use, appropriate to the situation and character, for example:

I am of the opinion, undoubtedly, furthermore, subsequently, nonetheless and so on.

Re-telling scenes as narratives

Once groups have created and presented scenes, they can replay them silently, accompanied by a spoken narrative, for example: ‘The Mayor stared at the piper and smirked. He told him to take what he was being offered and get out.’

The same scene could be replayed, with characters speaking their inner thoughts and feelings in role.

The audience can recount the scene they have witnessed or gossip about it, as if they were passers-by.

Proxemics

The participants place themselves physically and meaningfully in relation to a character, explaining and justifying their positioning, for example ‘I am standing here because…’ This could be verbally extended to include speculation by adding a second sentence, starting with, ‘I wonder if he/she has considered…’

Forum theatre

Issue based scenes are devised and then replayed with interventions from the audience of spect-actors. They can direct the actors, hoping to achieve a more positive outcome for the characters. Or audience members can become substitute actors and play their part differently in hope of achieving a better outcome. Forum theatre can exemplify how changing what we say, and how, sometimes leads to better outcomes.