Where's the Drama?

Where's the Drama?

4th March, 2016

Matthew discusses the absence of Drama Education in the primary setting and talks about some of its clear benefits

In today’s post, I’d like to deviate from my usual subject matter to discuss an issue that is very close to my heart; the issue of drama education. First, some personal background. In primary school, the amount of drama (or performing arts) education I received was minimal; aside from school-wide events such as end-of-year concerts, the only time that performing arts was treated as a subject was in my final year of primary school. This was not taught by a professional performing arts teacher; it was taught by one of the usual teachers, who had some experience with performing herself (she was a good teacher, though). Although enjoyable, it was clearly not given the same attention that other artistic areas, such as visual art and music, were given, as those subjects were taught from Prep onwards.

This baffles me, because I believe that the performing arts is, out of the areas of the creative arts, the one most applicable to the widest variety of students. It has been said that drama-based subjects tend to only teach you how to recite scripts onstage, but there is so much more to it, both at a primary and secondary level. Today I will address three generalised benefits of the performing arts that I feel are not only important for all students to learn, but in the future I may speak more specifically.

1. Drama teaches about empathy. In order to play a character, any kind of character, a person must be able to some extent to place themselves in the shoes of a person who is different to them, both in personality and in situation. This happens in any form of drama, from the simplest of role-play exercises to improvisation to Shakespeare. 
2. Drama is excellent preparation for public speaking, as well as a significant confidence booster. Not only does playing a character require a person to pretend certain emotions, it requires, at least at some point, that these emotions be pretended and lines delivered in front of an audience. As a personal hobby, I help to run a youth theatre group in my local town, and I have seen many children and teenagers move from quiet and timid individuals to confident actors, able to make a fool of themselves onstage without embarrassment.
3. Finally for today, I believe that the performing arts are fantastic for developing new friendships between students, and thus improving their social skills. Creating and/or performing a piece together promotes teamwork, and requires students to negotiate with one another about characters, settings and staging. At times, other creative arts subjects, particularly art, tend to result in a large amount of solo work, whereas here the focus is collaboration.

I could spend much more time discussing the virtues of the performing arts as a way for students to grow, and I may do so in the future, but for now I ask only one thing; have a think about your creative arts experiences at school. Which subjects did you spend the most time on? Most importantly, what skills did you learn? Because although it may be uncommon, I know that I developed the most personally, rather than simply academically, by being involved in performing arts.

-Matthew