ABSTRACT
Drama is not about the teacher taking roles and the children remaining as themselves. It is always the case, even when the children appear to have no defined role, as with the class when they meet Goldilocks and her Dad (Ideas 2), that they are shifting into fiction. This means that they begin to talk and behave in ways that fit the fiction, to take action and adopt attitudes which are not real. It is a very short step to giving them specified roles where what is required from them is clearly part of the fiction. Then we are asking them not to become someone else, not to act in a theatrical way, but to take up a new viewpoint, to look at the situation in a different way. Compare this to what we have said about the teacher taking on role in Ideas 4. We most often ask the children to look at the drama situation as though they are adults. This is the power of the ‘as if’ mode of drama.
