Drama as a Tool in Education

By Holly Fortin

(The following is inspired by an article entitled "Stages of Drama" by Eugene Schwartz, which appeared in the magazine Renewal Vol.2 , No. 1)With spring in the air, classrooms at the White Mt. Waldorf School are abuzz with preparations for a much-loved annual ritual the class play. While many schools offer wonderful theater opportunities for their students, in no other school setting is drama so thoroughly integrated with other subjects. For the Waldorf teacher, the class play provides the opportunity to weave together academic, artistic and social aspects of the year coming to a close. And for the child it becomes a "rite of passage" by which they re-experience, in an albeit external way, the changes in self-awareness and maturation that have taken place.The subject matter of the play is usually drawn from the literary and /or historical content that the class has studied in a particular year. This year my class will perform the myth Demeter and Persephone to culminate our exploration of Ancient Greece. Last year we dramatized two Norse myths and in years prior a story from the Old Testament, the legend of St. Odilia and a Russian Fairy Tale.The content an individual teacher chooses reflects the needs of their particular group. In many cases the plays are written by the teacher specifically to meet those needs. Who should play which role takes much deliberation and properly cast a play can become a powerful healing experience for an individual child or an entire class.In addition to the content, the form of the play changes as the children mature. To understand these changes and how they meet the growing child, we must explore the history of drama itself. In ancient Greece, drama went through three distinct stages, remnants of which may be found in the works of Aeschulus, Sophocles, and Euripides. In the first stage the dramatic text was performed only by the chorus, whose speech and presence represented the plethora of beings of the spiritual world. In the second stage, individual actors separated themselves from the choral ranks, performing in pantomime what was spoken by the chorus. In the third stage, the individual actors spoke individual parts, while the chorus proved through its commentary that it was no longer able to fathom the depths of the independent human being.Waldorf education recognizes that the child's developing consciousness reflects those cultural changes once experienced by all humanity. Thus an appropriate dramatic form for the early grades has all the children speaking in chorus. During the middle grades there is a dialogue between a chorus and the single actor. Only in the older grades is the unfolding of the full-fledged "character" appropriate. These changes are also reflected in the staging of a play. Early productions were often "in the round" where the audience surrounded and embraced the performance, allowing them to see each other as well as the actors. Not until the late seventeenth century was the proscenium stage developed where stage and audience became two distinct worlds. Thus while it would not be appropriate to place a first or second grader on a stage before footlights with the audience wreathed in darkness, for a seventh or eighth grader it would meet their soul experience of separation and standing on one's own.Finally, rhyme and meter are essential elements in plays to be recited and performed by children in the lower grades. Rhyming couplets in the first two or three grades, followed by more complex rhyme schemes in later years aid memorization and help to awaken in children the musical element inherent in our language. Alliteration may be used, especially when doing a Norse play, and plays written in prose for the seventh or eighth grader. Many Waldorf eighth grades select a Shakespeare play as their culminating production.Add the multitude of activities that lie behind a production -- music, both choral and instrumental; set and costume design and execution; poster and program creation -- and the social experience for the entire class is invaluable. Together with the production itself all these aspects point to the central role of drama in the curriculum of the Waldorf school.The public is cordially invited to a public performance of Demeter and Persephone performed by the Eldest Class of the White Mt. Waldorf School on Friday, March 30th at 6:30 in the Great Room at Tin Mt. Conservation Center. For information, call 447-3168.