Drama Strategy: Thought-tracking

What is thought-tracking?

Thought-tracking is a strategy that enables us to listen together to a character's inner thoughts at a particular moment in the drama. At its simplest, the action is frozen and the teacher touches a character on the shoulder. This is the signal for that person to speak aloud their ‘in role’ thoughts. To avoid touching students, teachers can set up a different signal, for example the teacher could stand near the character and signal/mime that they are listening to them. We can use thought-tracking to:

• Create and share the thoughts of one character at a particular moment in the drama
• Create and share the thoughts of one character at various moments in the drama, (revealing whether or not their thinking has changed over time)
• Create and listen to the thoughts of different characters at the same moment in the drama (revealing a range of inner thoughts)
• Create and listen to the thoughts of various characters at different times in the drama (thus revealing which characters’ thinking has shifted)
• Generate a soliloquy (thinking aloud)
• Generate content for an improvised monologue (which might subsequently be scripted).

Thought-tracking can be ‘set up’ in various ways:

Individual and collective thoughts: The inner thoughts of one character might be spoken by only the person role-playing that character. Alternatively, several people might be asked to speak out loud the one character's inner thoughts. When several students speak the thoughts of one character, they are all identifying with that character and building their shared understanding of that character through inter-thinking.

Stepping into the scene (as ‘thoughts’): Teachers can freeze a scene and then invite other students to step into it, stand close to a character and voice that character's thoughts. One character can end up with several people standing alongside or behind them, voicing their inner thoughts.

Replaying scenes (with or without the addition of ‘inner thoughts’): Characters’ inner thoughts during scenes can be replayed in various ways, for example:

• We can just hear the characters talking aloud to each other (without revealing their inner thoughts)
• The scene can be replayed, with each character pausing after speaking, (to allow someone else to speak their inner thoughts for them)
• The scene can be replayed with the direct speech now mimed by the characters, with just the inner thoughts of the characters being spoken by their shadows throughout.

Time sequencing a character's thoughts: Students can be asked to devise two or more still images that depict different significant moments in the drama. At least one of the characters will appear in every scene. This can help us highlight and track changes in a character's thinking during the drama.

Passing thoughts: The students stand in a circle. A character stands in the middle. The students in turn can decide to cross the circle, walk past the character and speak the character's thoughts aloud as they pass by. Variations of this are that:

• As they pass by, they can speak their own ‘in role’ thoughts about the character in the centre
• As they pass by, they can speak their personal, ‘out of role’ thoughts about the character in the centre
• They can speak directly to the character as they pass by, (rather than about them.

Proxemics: A character stands in the centre of the room or stage. The students are asked (in or out of role), to position themselves physically in relation to that character. Their positioning should be related to their thoughts and feelings about that character. They need to justify their positioning, starting with the words ‘I am standing here because …’.

Thought Walk: The character takes a solitary walk around the room, talking to themselves ‘in role’, as they walk. No-one is listening. Variations of this are that:

• The character walks and talks but can choose to stand still and silent at times, before moving and talking again
• The teacher might ask the walkers to all ‘freeze’. As the teacher passes by each character, they will ‘thought walk’ on the spot, until the teacher walks on to the next person.

What might we do with a character's inner thoughts?

Thought collage: Thoughts that have already been gathered through thought-tracking can then be used to create together a Thought Collage, (a type of Voice Collage). The students stand close together, with their eyes closed. They improvise together ‘blind’, using the character's thoughts. They can use changes in volume, repetition, words, phrases or whole sentences. Their collective ‘thought collage’ should gather momentum, reach a crescendo and then gradually slow down and end in silence.