ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses the power of English to broaden students’ maps of experience by extending their imaginative capacity. With drama in English lessons, teachers generally do this in two ways. First, as a tool for connecting students with the content of their learning. Setting up activities that bring students into the world of the lesson often involves seeing through others’ eyes and trying on social experiences. Tapping into and encouraging, in other words, a student’s capacity for emotional empathy. Second, they do it by using challenging texts as a way to develop students’ critical capacity. Making use of an able student’s potential to engage in cognitive empathy. It’s about giving able students an inroad into linguistic and emotional universes while at the same time giving them the wherewithal to articulate their responses, so that they might enter into a more sophisticated dialogue with the texts and with each other. This can be summarised as the use of drama as a way of ‘disturbing the peace,’ the use of drama as a way of asking questions, defying expectations and challenging complacency. The practical application of these ideas form two broad headings. Drama techniques that might be used to stimulate an imaginative and creative response to the subject matter of English lessons, and ways to read and respond to play texts in the classroom. This is followed by a list of scripts and the age groups they might work for; some useful practical guides, a note on the importance for teachers of experiencing contemporary plays and productions and, finally, sample lesson plans for a series of lessons around the ethically challenging play, Future Conditional by Tamsin Oglesby.