One-off workshop: The Journey of the Magi

Resources:

Poem: Journey of the Magi by T.S. Eliot

Painting (projected): Adoration of the Magi by Leonardo di Vinci

Music (optional): ‘Journey of the Magi’ on A Feast of Songs by Barry and Beth Hall: bit.ly/2Zyekbn

Learning Objectives:

• To ‘make sense’ of a narrative poem through drama
• To engage with a culturally significant story in an embodied, cognitive, and affective way
• To use drama strategies to deepen thinking and communicate a shared understanding of the poem.

Step 1: The weather

Explain that the students are camel drivers, leading reluctant camels on a bitterly cold journey. Ask them to travel, sometimes freezing, into a still image before continuing their journey. After a while, you call out ‘freeze’ and then read aloud lines 1-5 of the poem:

‘A cold coming we had of it …

The very dead of winter.’

Step 2: The camel drivers

Ask them to improvise in groups of three or four, as grumpy camel drivers in melting snow, trying to get a stubborn camel to stand up. Lead them into this with:

‘And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory, Lying down in the melting snow.’

Then, freeze the scenes and explain you will pass by each group and eavesdrop. Their scenes recommence as you approach and freeze again once you have passed by. You could do this again with students speaking their inner thoughts as you pass.

You end by saying:

‘Then the camel men cursing and grumbling and running away, and wanting their liquor and women.’

Step 3: The ideal and the reality

The traveller remembers:

‘The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces, And the silken girls bringing sherbet.’

In different groups of four, ask them to devise two contrasting, still images, such as the traveller's ‘ideal’ and his current ‘reality’. They need to practise transitioning between images, ending with the ‘reality’ image and then melting it.

The group's images can be performed seamlessly, as a whole class performance.

Step 4: Problems on our journey

And the night-fires going out (1), and the lack of shelters (2),

And the cities hostile (3) and the towns unfriendly (4)

And the villages dirty (5) and charging high prices (6)

Divide the class into six groups and give one of the problems (1–6), to each group. Ask them to devise a short scene depicting the problem. The scenes are then performed in sequence, with the relevant line spoken as each scene ends. You end by saying:

‘A hard time we had of it.’

Step 5: Voices in our sleep

Everyone selects a word, phrase, or sentence that they have spoken during the drama (or they could each choose a word, line, or phrase from the poem so far). They gather together, with eyes closed and improvise a Voice Collage. Anyone may speak their word, phrase, or sentence aloud, whenever and as often as they wish but the Voice Collage needs to start quietly, gradually crescendo and then slowly fade to silence. You break the silence, saying:

‘With the voices singing in our ears, saying That this was all folly.’

Step 6: The valley

You read from, ‘Then at dawn…’ to ‘Vine leaves over the lintel’. Explain that they will become landscape features (natural or man-made). Each person will enter the space, physically position themselves, state what they are and elaborate, such as ‘I am the tallest tree and I can see for miles.’ They start with Eliot's landscape features but may then add other features that are ‘in keeping’.

Explain that you will walk through the landscape as a Magus. They speak to (or about) you, as you pass, such as ‘Keep walking. There is nothing for you here.’

You can narrate the scene to a close, such as: ‘The inn was full of drunks, with no information for us, so we left. That evening, we arrived at our destination’… ‘Finding the place; it was (you might say) satisfactory.’

Step 7 – The arrival

Project da Vinci's, The Adoration of the Magi (ideally life-sized as a backdrop). Ask them to study it silently and then invite them to speak sentences, that start with, ‘I notice …’, for example ‘I notice that no-one looks happy’.

They need to study the expressions, gestures and positioning of the characters, before recreating the painting as a tableau. They each enter in turn and ‘freeze’ as someone in the painting. An appropriate soundtrack during this activity adds atmosphere and helps blend the tableau.

You enter last and say:

‘All this was a long time ago, I remember …’

‘Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.’

Then ask them to leave the tableau one at a time, (in role). You leave last, saying:

‘We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,

With an alien people clutching their gods.

I should be glad of another death.’