Drama Activities

Drama, as a form of self-expression, is age-old and exists in every culture in the world. In fact, it has always been used as a means of exploring and expressing human feeling. Being a distinct skill in itself, it is a subject that is offered in secondary school. However, being versatile and flexible, drama can be used in other areas of the curriculum as well, in the form of drama activities.

Make believe forms are large part of childhood. Pretending while enacting a favorite story or playing house is a way of learning about the world as well as themselves, thus dramatic play is a tool children use unconsciously to explore human experience. Hence, by incorporating drama activities in the regular curricula, teachers can take advantage of this natural urge children have of play-acting. Drama activities can also be a great way to warm-up before taking part in a play, or used as exercises to tune oneself, if acting/drama is chosen as a subject for building a career in it.

Drama activities have a wide variety of beneficial effects, such as:

• It helps in developing imagination, creativity, and flexible ways of thinking
• It helps in developing attention to detail, focus, and concentration
• Children learn how to communicate effectively by using movement and language
• It helps in exploring inner values, feelings, and thoughts
• It helps in developing the ability to interact and work with others
• It helps in building self-confidence and self-esteem
• It helps in understanding the world and oneself

Although some teachers may think that including drama activities may be too stressful or become unruly, the natural interest that play-acting generates makes it interesting and easily manageable. Some of the best drama activities can be quite simple, without any need for memorizing lines or elaborate props or materials. Rather than providing a performance for an audience, drama activities are focused more on developing the personality of children. In addition, drama activities can also include games, apart from dramatics, per se.

Here are some interesting drama activities that can be tried out:

Role Playing: This drama activity can be done singly or in pairs. Tell the children to spend a few moments, say 10 minutes, imagining about someone, such as a queen/king, president, or a famous celebrity, and then tell them to act out the role.

This can also be done in pairs, or in small groups, such as two airplane pilots flying an airplane, a team of doctors with nurses in an operating theater, firemen in a rescue effort, a couple of astronauts out in space or in a new world, and so on.

Monologue: Tell the children to pair up and take turns to discuss various topics, a single word at a time, such as painting, outer space, a sport, and so on. After a while, each child can choose one of the topics they had discussed, and talk about it for a minute. This drama activity is meant to develop skills like public speaking, spoken language, improvisation, and voice projection.

Pantomime: Children of all ages simply love using just bodily movements, gestures, and facial expressions to act out a role or another person, without any words. While one child is performing the pantomime, the others can try and guess who or what he/she is miming. This drama activity can also be done as a group activity, such as cleaning a room, gardening, buying vegetables and fruits in a supermarket, playing in a playground, enacting a ceremonious occasion like a wedding, enacting a musical band, and so on.

Story Telling: There are so many stories that can be used for this drama activity. When choosing a story, look for characters that are dynamic, and not too complex plots. The stories should not be merely read out aloud, but told, hence, the children need to familiarize themselves with the stories first. Enacting them out is even more fun for children, especially if the story has humorous characters and situations. They could even act out inanimate objects relating to the plot. Encourage them to use their imagination to stretch out the limits of the story. Scenes from Shakespeare’s plays or from a Harry Potter book would be great for older children. Younger children will have great fun with familiar stories like Snowhite and the Seven Dwarfs, Hansel and Gretel, or Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

Passing the Face: Apart from a classroom drama activity, this can also be used by actors just prior to a performance, in the green room. It enables the participants to overcome their fears, and become more relaxed and at ease with themselves. The whole group should stand in a circle, holding hands. Then, one person in the circle begins by turning to the person on his/her right and making a face – it could be an emotional face or a funny face. The next person then makes another face and passes it to the person next to him/her, and so on. The expressions should not be copied, but variations of a theme be explored instead, such as each one thinking of a different emotional or funny face.