Mime cars, etc

RJPM 1 asked to have the benefit(?) of my teaching for a second week, so I am back there again with a different group, of more senior students, alongside a handful of teachers.  It does not exactly seem fair, seeing as there are twenty-seven (I think) campuses, but mine is not to reason why.

The opening session of each new group is always interesting, though the word is getting around that a circle of chairs is the preferred opening position.  In RJPM’s spacious open area – I think there is one on every floor, each slightly different – there are a mixture of Junior chairs – not quite infant chairs, but definitely smaller than regular ones – mixed with a set of circular… erm, well look at the pictures.  I like these a lot, as they do not encourage the switching off that chairs provide, and are also non-directional, to switch your focus, you simply swivel.  They are also excellent wheels, as we were to discover.

It is an interesting mixture, this group.  There are a lot of well-built, tall boys.  There is a roughly equal number of smaller girls.  And there are about half a dozen teachers, all female, with varying levels of confidence.  It has made for an interesting dynamic.  The one thing that unites them is that they all listen well; it is refreshing, but slightly intimidating, to have that level of focus directed upon me.

The actual lessons are definitely falling into a regular pattern: stillness to mime to simple physical theatre to characterisation to spontaneous improvisation.  Which sums it up neatly enough.  But it would start to become tedious, and would not be responding to the particular needs of each group, if I followed a rigid pattern.  It is no use spouting such ideas as “Drama is a creative subject and needs to be taught creatively” if I then ignore that.  Which means that I do not start with a rigid lesson plan, but allow ideas to blossom.  I tell the students to trust their imaginations and each other; which ought to mean that I do the same.  Though how that fits into the pattern of written out lesson plans for every lesson, with aims and objectives and a risk assessment before you step into the room I have no idea.  It was lucky for me that I always managed to escape/ignore such a stultifying and tedious regime.

But some things repeat, of course they do.  Today we had sort of reached the physical theatre phase, so I used a well-worn favourite: create a car using your bodies, working in groups of about eight.  I tell them they can have a maximum of two humans (sometimes I specify one) and that there is an absolute maximum of four chairs/pouffes.  Most groups go immediately for the four wheels being pouffes on their side… and then realise they no longer have a chair for the seats.  Choices.

The new mantra of my teaching is “leave it to them”, and it is proving startlingly productive, but like all rules in Drama (and art in general) it is there to be broken, so when I can see that there all sorts of possibilities being simply ignored, then I might give them a nudge. Or a shove.  Or whatever.  My general approach is to remind them that cars have things that work in some way or other, and that those working parts often make a noise.

Once I had persuaded the teachers not to fall into their natural role and take over, there was the usual array of most creative ideas from the three groups.  And with my new approach, I am regularly surprised by ideas I had never seen before.  My favourite was the boy who gained a huge response by being a throaty exhaust.  I laughed and laughed (but then, I often do.)