All the World’s a Stage: The Benefits of Drama

By Tracey Buot

The theatre is a visual, auditory and kinesthetic experience for students, which makes it a valuable venue for fostering the skill and creativity of self-expression. Children with learning differences can be nourished educationally, as well as socially, through the experience of drama.

In a drama class, a child can be a princess, a dinosaur or a cowboy. Through improvisation, the possibilities are endless. As a drama teacher, I find that most children are happy to use their imagination and, unlike adults, they have an easier time letting go of inhibitions. This applies to children with learning differences as well. While I have seen children with learning differences be more cautious at fi rst, once they receive a bit of encouragement they are very willing and excited to explore their imagination through guided improvisation. A favorite exercise is “movement stories.” I have the children listen to a story and “act” it out as I read. Because it’s a group exercise, the spotlight is not on one particular child. The key is to make children feel comfortable to explore and to express themselves.

Creating a safe space
The first goal is to create a working space that is free of judgment. Before drama exploration can begin, all students must know they are supported by the whole group. A lack of trust or the sense of being judged can stifle creativity. Improvisation is a drama exercise where there are no wrong choices, only stronger or more effective ones. This promotes confidence in a student’s ability to solve problems and act on his decisions. A group dynamic of trust, where everyone is respected and encouraged, should be established early.

An experience for the senses
Drama provides a multi-sensory experience for students. While watching classmates perform, students see how others interpret and express the emotions of a particular dialogue or scene. Along with this visual stimulation, there is strong auditory input as students discern the varying intonations and inflections in their classmates’ voices. Many children with learning differences have a difficult time understanding the social cues that are inherent in facial expressions and voice tones. Drama classes offer these students the opportunity to “practice” seeing and understanding complicated emotions and feelings. Movement is also an integral part of theatre. An actor expresses emotion with his whole body, not just his face and voice. Children learn to use their bodies on the stage as a way of self-expression and to communicate with their audience.

Movement is explored by running, jumping, skipping, crawling, twirling – essentially any type of movement is welcome on the stage. A child’s ability to follow multi-step directions can be improved through movement exercises. For example, the directions may sound like, “First, let’s jump high. Great, now higher and faster. Wonderful, now let’s crawl low to the floor. Can we go any lower? How about crawling sideways…” These types of exercises provide a child with practice on listening to a direction, responding appropriately and then anticipating the next direction.

Another way to use movement is to add an emotional layer to the physical movement. This is especially beneficial for children with learning differences who have trouble with social cues. The exercise may begin with, “We are going to explore happy and sad today. Let’s make our faces look sad (the teacher demonstrates). Can we look sadder? Let’s make our shoulders look sad. How would we walk sad? Great! How would we run sad?” The kids must make decisions about how their body movements (kinesthesia) will best express the emotion and/or content of the scene. At the same time, their movement on the stage provides proprioceptive (movement in response to the environment) stimulation as they figure out how to use their physical setting to communicate ideas and feelings.

Building character on and off the stage
Students with learning differences may experience some challenges with acting. They may find it difficult to memorize lines, or they may not possess a strong self-awareness of how their body moves on stage or how they sound vocally. This causes difficulties when trying to learn and remember scripted stage movements or explore character development. Experimentation should be encouraged by giving positive comments and suggestions, rather than judgments, and including the students in the decision-making process. During an improvisational exercise, the teacher will often go through the exercise with the students as a participant and encourage them to explore how they want to express themselves. If they are exploring an emotion such as anger, the teacher will show what her face might look like if she was angry and at the same time ask them to make their faces show anger. Guiding students by talking through the exercise allows them to think “outside the box” and develop problem-solving skills while nurturing creativity.

The unexpected response to a direction is one way that a student may think “out of the box.” For instance, if exploring pantomime, the students may be given “magic clay.” They would then be prompted with, “OK, this is magic clay and can turn into anything you want it to be. But, it has to be able to fly.” A typical response would be a balloon or bird. But, if a student creates a spaceship, gets inside and pretends to take off to a distant planet, then he has reached the next level of creativity. Students with learning differences may initially find this area of drama challenging, but because they participate in the problem-solving aspect of theatre, they learn to find ways to make the character and scene work.

A child who experiences difficulty with motor skills can improve those skills through pantomime (acting without words) exploration. Students learn to “show” and “tell” an audience what an object is and does by utilizing their fine and gross motor skills. Sometimes students focus on a small movement or small object, such as pretending to knit or write with a quill pen. In contrast, exploring the drama room and making their bodies fill up as much space as possible allows the children to work on gross motor skills. Pantomime is also used to tell a “story” without speaking. For kids who are self-conscious about speaking or who lack confidence in their verbal skills, pantomiming frees them to perform without anxiety.

For a child who is timid, unsure or lacking in confidence, drama provides the tools to learn self-expression and communication skills. It also helps children make sense of how people react and respond. Improvisation presents students with the challenge and opportunity to think quickly, to act on impulse and to react to their surroundings. There is no right answer, no script and no predisposed idea of what they are to do. The ability to think in the moment and make choices is a “real life” skill that is valuable for every student. Students find improvisation fun since it offers an “anything goes” platform for creativity and imagination.

I once had a student who had self-proclaimed stage fright and did not want to perform in class or in a play. She was reluctant to participate and was visibly nervous. Once she could see that no one person would be on the spot to “perform,” and that we were all engaging in the exercise together, she felt more comfortable about participating. I used group games and exercises to build her trust in me and in the class members. Once a child feels safe, she is more willing to engage with the group and participate. As a drama teacher, I have learned that the focus should be not on the child’s shyness or anxiety, but on the exercise at hand and guiding the child one step at time. Through the course of the school year, this shy, quiet student performed in two plays and gained enough confidence to even make meaningful suggestions during the rehearsal process!

I want my students to know they are all equally important and needed in the creative process. Through drama instruction, even those students who struggle in traditional classes show an amazing capacity for creativity and insight. Using drama as a conduit, children with learning
differences can transcend the difficulties they may face daily in their classes, sports teams, social life and home. The are able to tap into the person they see themselves to be.