Rich context example 2: The voices of war
Each context elaboration is coded, using the summary notation recorded with each art’s strand. A bold strand code indicates a dominant strand in the given context. If both or all codes are bolded, they are considered to have equal weighting in the given context.
Relationships and connection
The contexts for learning outlined below make links to the
drama key concept of relationships and connection.
Possible context – involving community voices
(DI, UC, CI)
- Invite members of the community, for example, parents and members of the RSA, to contribute their experiences, thoughts, and opinions to a devised/created drama about war.
- Perform the created dramas in community spaces, sharing the embodiment of their ideas with the audience.
Possible context – plays about war
(UC, PK, CI)
- Read and discuss Once on Chunuk Bair by Maurice Shadbolt or Shuriken by Vincent O’Sullivan, reflecting on characters, ideas, and themes.
- Use drama techniques to create and develop the characters, relationships and situations.
- Perform scenes from the play.
Possible context – voices of the land
(DI, CI, PK)
- Take a field trip to a local site that has significance for members of your family, whānau, or community in connection with war and conflict.
- Share stories contributed by the students, their families, and the community linked to this site or other similar sites.
- Students choose a story/stories or characters to base a drama on and perform their dramas in or around the site.
- Invite the local community as audience.
Possible context – war plays
(UC, DI, PK)
- Read and reflect on other plays, or extracts from plays, on the topic of war from other parts of the world. These should reflect different cultures and perspectives and use different theatre forms.
- Discuss, in small groups or as a whole class, how the ideas in the plays might link to students’ experience or knowledge of war or add to their knowledge or perspectives.
- How are these plays or the ideas in them related to modern/current conflicts around the world?
- Use any of these plays for performance (scenes or whole play) and for ideas for creating own plays, scenes, and performances.
-
Possible plays include:
• Strange Resting Places by Paolo Rotondo and Rob Mokaraka
• Henry IV Part 1, Macbeth, Richard III by Shakespeare
• Antigone by Sophocles
• George Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man
• Mother Courage by Bertolt Brecht
• Journey's End by R. C. Sherriff
• Black Watch by David Hare
• Streamers, Sticks and Bones and The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel by David Rabe
• Oh What a Lovely War by Charles Chilton and Joan Littlewood
• All my Sons by Arthur Miller.
Possible context – drama technologies
(PK, UC, CI)
- Explore ways in which drama technologies (set, props, costume, lighting, sound, audiovisual, masks) could be used in different ways to communicate important ideas, themes, action, situation, issues, and perspectives in any of the war plays or the devised work associated with this theme.
TOP
Embodiment and performance
The contexts for learning outlined below make links to the
drama key concept of embodiment and performance.
Possible context – poems of war
(UC, PK, CI)
-
Read war poetry from a range of timeframes and contexts. Examples include:
• “The Fallen” by A. R. D. Fairburn
• “Six Young Men” by Ted Hughes
• “Dolce et Decorum Est” and “Mental Cases” by Wilfred Owen
• “Word of Te Whiti” by Barry Mitcalfe
• “Spirit of Anzac” by Mike Subritsky
• “Parihaka” by Apirana Taylor.
- Explore the use of drama techniques (voice, body, movement and space) to perform a selection of poems as performance poetry.
Possible context – soundscapes and chorus
(DI, PK, CI)
- Use words from the poems (above) to create soundscapes and a chorus of movement, actions, and reactions, to communicate ideas or concepts about war from different perspectives.
- Share these with the class.
Possible context – dramatising reports of war
(DI, PK, CI, UC)
- Use newspaper photos, articles, YouTube, and books, for example, Eric Hobsbawm’s Globalisation, Democracy and Terrorism (2008, Little Brown), as stimulus material to explore war from different perspectives and in different places.
- Issues or themes could include, for example, women and children living in war-torn countries, parents of suicide bombers, teenagers in occupied areas.
- Using the information from investigations about war, create soundscapes of voices, frozen tableaux, spoken thoughts reflecting experiences in and emotions or thoughts about war.
- Share these dramatisations with the class.
Possible context – communicating perspectives on war
(DI, CI, PK, UC)
- Use the material gathered in the previous contexts as a starting point for devised work or scriptwriting to communicate concepts and perspectives on war or conflict.
TOP
Reflection, challenge, and transformation
The contexts for learning outlined below make links to the
drama key concept of reflection, challenge, and transformation.
Possible context – creating and devising
(DI, CI)
- In small groups, choose themes, ideas and/or characters from Once on Chunuk Bair by Maurice Shadbolt to use as a starting point for own devised or created work on the topic the voices of war.
- Reflect, challenge, and mirror different ideas and perspectives through physical work.
- Perform the devised/created scenes for an audience.
Possible context – creating documentary or epic theatre
(UC, CI, DI)
- Use diaries, blogs, YouTube accounts and reflections, novels, short stories, interviews with members of the community to create documentary theatre or epic theatre with a specific perspective/s on the experiences of war.
Possible context – performing a play about war
(CI, PK)
- As a class, choose one play, or perform a selection of extracts from various plays on the theme of war, for an invited audience.
- Aim to engage the audience by reflecting, challenging, moving, and transforming.
- Use drama technologies (set, props, costume, lighting, sound, audiovisual, masks) to enhance the communication of the main ideas and concepts of the production.
- Students choose to act, direct, or take a technical role (set, costume, lighting, sound) in the production.
< back to context elaborations – level 8 drama
Last updated July 2, 2012
TOP
