Drama Strategy: Hot-seating

What is hot-seating?

Hot-seating involves having a dialogue with a character. The character steps out of the drama for a while, usually sits in an appointed chair (the hot-seat) and is open to questioning by the audience or students. The character must answer in role.

You do not have use a chair as a hot-seat. You can just freeze or recreate a key moment in the drama and ‘hot-seat’ a character in situ.

What does hot-seating provide?

• A way of simultaneously focusing everyone's attention on one character
• A method of questioning a character ‘in depth’, to more deeply understand their motives, feelings, viewpoint and development
• A shared learning experience, which can be reflected on, analysed and discussed.

Who asks the questions?

The questioners need not be in any particular role, in which case we can say that they are in a ‘shadow role’. However, they can be given roles. For example, the person in the hot-seat could be an eyewitness to a crime, and the questioners could be police officers ‘hot-seating’ the witness.

What are the rules?

You decide and state the ground rules that suit your students and your purpose, such as:

• The character must answer questions honestly
• No-one can ask two questions in a row (prevents one student dominating)
• Only two questions per person (encourages carefully considered and deeper questioning)
• Pairs of students have to agree one question to ask (requires that the initial questions are discussed, decided, shaped and justified before being asked).

You can question spontaneously or prepare questions. If students have prepared questions, you might ask to hear some of the questions that they will be asking. If the person who will be in the hot-seat is listening, it allows them time to think about answers in advance. It also allows the questions to be discussed and refined.

Which character should be hot-seated?

You can ask students which character they would most like to hot-seat and get them to justify their choice. You can hot-seat several characters in turn or the same character at different points in the drama. The latter helps students grasp a character's development. It is also possible to bring in and hot-seat characters that are not in the actual drama but who would know the character in some way, such as a friend, relative or neighbour. These invented characters can provide further narrative, background information and insights, when we are creating a drama.

Who will play the character on the hot-seat?

• Sometimes an actor steps out of a play and makes themselves available to talk in role with the audience
• Alternatively, a role can be passed among the drama class. Various students in turn sit in the hot-seat
• A small group of students can take on the same role together, as a collective role, where any group member can answer as the character. You might put in a rule that they need to take turns and listen carefully to each other, to ensure consistency of character
• A teacher might sit in the hot-seat as a way to give information or focus the students’ attention in particular areas.

During the hot-seating

The teacher might decide to let the hot-seating flow or to freeze it at times, to enable students to consider immediately what a character has just said. Don't let hot-seating drag on too long. Stop with the questioners still wanting to know more.

After the hot-seating

Before the character leaves the hot-seat, you could ask them to speak out loud (in role) any more inner thoughts they want to share. This is thought-tracking, and yields an improvised monologue.

The students should consider what has been learned from the hot-seating. You can gather and record information, opinions and feelings about the character afterwards, in various ways:

• Role on the Wall: Draw the outline of the character and using self-adhesive labels ask the students to write what they know about this character and stick it around the outline. The labels can be placed in appropriate places – ‘she loves her father’ might be placed near the heart.You can create sections around the outline, with different titles:
• a. What the character says
• b. What the character thinks
• c. What the character does
• The students place their labels in the appropriate section.
• Proxemics: Ask the students to stand in a circle. In the centre, place the already hot-seated character. The students can enter the circle in turn and physically place themselves, in relation to the character, justifying their positioning – ‘I am standing here, right next to Lear because I feel so sorry for him’ or, ‘I am standing here, with my back to Lear because I am disgusted at the way he is treating Cordelia.’